Dive Brief:
- St. Louis’ Maryville University is launching an iPad program for freshmen this fall, with additional plans to distribute the devices to all sophomores in the School of Education.
- The university started training faculty last December and will offer two weeks of professional development — one this month, and another next spring.
- To start, the iPads will be integrated into 16 lower-level courses in business, English, psychology, education, and the health professions.
Dive Insight:
Maryville is the latest institution to harness the power of pre-loaded iPads for its students. Lynn University offers an entire bachelor’s degree program called iLynn as a cheaper, online alternative. K-12 institutions are more often the ones to adopt 1:1 tech initiatives, distributing a device to every student. This helps teachers control the tech use in the classroom and expands opportunities to use digital devices for those who may not have them at home. By college, most institutions require students to come with their own laptops. Getting students to bring such devices isn’t a problem. In higher ed, the question more often is how to meet the network demands of three or four WiFi-enabled devices per student.