Lowering the Barriers to Mobile Device Adoption

Central Michigan University has launched an initiative to dramatically increase the engagement of incoming education students through a combination of technologies centered on Apple's iPod touch. This has been accomplished with a low cost of entry, leveraging an interdepartmental collaboration to provide a bookstore rental program, with technology and instructional design assistance from a distributed college support group and the university's faculty development center. The initiative focuses on classroom response technology and delivery of mobile content. In implementing this initiative, we faced a surprising number of neophyte student users and veteran faculty who were not "digital natives."