Faculty study effectiveness of iPads in classroom

Eight IU-Bloomington faculty members have access to iPads as a part of a year-long experiment to gauge the effectiveness of iPads in the classroom, said John Gosney, faculty liaison for University Information Technology Services.

“The point of these faculty learning communities is to determine the viability of using iPads for teaching and learning so we may find that even though they are very cool products, they just don’t work in the classroom or maybe there is something that works better,” he said.

The faculty learning communities are made up of faculty from a variety of departments from fine arts to geology to English, Gosney said.

“We really didn’t have an issue with finding faculty from across the spectrum of disciplines,” he said. “We got an incredible response.”

Each faculty member has a different use for the iPads in the classroom, Gosney said.
“Some want to use them for group collaboration, so giving them the iPad different apps allow them to collaborate together on different documents,” he said. “Some of the faculty are interested in the possibility of using them for electronic textbooks. Some of them are just interested in the multimedia capabilities of the iPad.”

Joshua Danish, assistant professor in the School of Education, is using the iPads to support visual diagramming exercises.

“Part of my research is looking at how technology supports learning and also how representations support learning, and so the iPad seemed like a really nice opportunity to look at both technology and representation supported learning in my own classes,” he said.

Danish said it is a good idea that UITS decided to explore iPads in this way because it is a topic for his research and people have been using iPads all over the country without really giving it any thought.

“The fact that IU is doing it this way is really, really clever,” he said. “I think it is going to mean, long-term, that if we do use iPads in classrooms a lot more, it will be well thought out and if we don’t, it will be because we did a small low cost experiment to realize that it wasn’t worth it yet.”

This experiment saves both students and faculty members time down the road if the iPads prove to be ineffective in the classroom, Danish said.

“I think it is really good for the students because they wont have iPads in their classrooms unless it makes sense and for the faculty because they aren’t really wasting time with it until people who are really motivated explore some of the ideas to share with them,” he said.