King for a Day on the Mobile Campus

In my Mobile Campus post I said that I would say more about a future campus ebook that I am hopeful will appear on the campus and how forward thinking professors, department heads, and deans will take advantage of the technology to enable learning.

First, the device. It will be a blend of the current PDA, tablet PC, and ebook reader devices. It will have a display that is big enough to get about a paperback's worth of information on the screen with plenty of space left over for media-rich extensions. Full audio and video capability with a video camera facing the user. A combination of touch-screen and hardware button interfaces that facilitates one handed use to hold, read, and turn pages. Full 3G and WiFi, plus Bluetooth for device-to-device or peripheral communication. Storage that can hold over 100 books and 300 hours of video.

The software will be a blend of ebook, elearning, and web technologies. The foundation is a an ebook reader. The reader needs to be fully interactive and media rich. Everything that a student can do with today's LMS course packs that accompany text books will be accomplished on the mobile device. Resources that a student will need for a course will be in the course pack and on the reader. Texts and supplemental reading, lectures, quizzes, and study aids will all reside on the ebook. Reference materials in the library or on the internet and access to a social networks of students and professors will be in the wireless computing cloud surrounding the ebook. The reader software will accommodate the way that a student, rather than a casual reader, uses a book. The ebook will have sophisticated highlighting and annotation capabilities that can be used for both study and for scholarly writhing. Part of this sophisticated software will be the ability to send text from the ebook to another PC and into a paper they are writing. Of course the quote comes fully attributed and formatted. And, since the professor has a master version of the course pack software running on his PC, any attempts at plagiarism of course pack materials is immediately spotted.

With this device the student will be able to do all course work except write long papers or create complex spreadsheets or presentations. Those tasks will still require the use of a more capable PC.

So what wll the colleges do differently? The early adopters will be graduate cohort programs in which the overall curriculum is under the supervision of a director or department head. Full-time and xecutive MBA programs are two examples. Cohort programs are able to compell a student to purchase an ebook or provide it to them as part of the program tuition cost. They are also able to provide professors with elearning resources, such as developers and technicians, and can ensure that curriculm take advantage of the ebook capabilities.

Cohort programs, especially those for mid-carer professionals, are also able to take advantage of blended learning techniques and build blended learning into their curricula. From my perspective there is a synergy with blended and mobile learning. Mobile learning frees the learner from the classroom. Blended learning provides learning opporunities outside the classroom. Professors will be able to create media-based lectures or use those provided by course pack publishers to better prepare students for in-class participation. Students will be able to prepare with flexible learning options and a resource that brings all of the materials they need to them in any place or at any time.