Jim Hahn’s research into technology-enhanced learning investigates developing mobile computing applications within library settings and provides unique insights into new students’ expectations and needs while helping inform the work he does as the orientation services and environments librarian for incoming undergraduate students at the University of Illinois. As an extension, his research also includes the investigation of technology loan programs in the Undergraduate Library.

Hilary Bussell is the eLearning librarian at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Previously, she was the instructional graduate assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Undergraduate Library. She holds an MLIS from the University of Illinois and an MA in philosophy from Loyola University Chicago. Her research interests include the application of emerging technologies in information literacy instruction and online learners’ uses and perceptions of the library.

Mobile technologies like the iPad 2 are profoundly impacting the way students communicate and learn in campus environments. As librarians ponder the implementation of technology loan programs and integration of the iPad with their instructional efforts, curricular uses of a device like the iPad are in need of sustained study.

The user needs and use cases for tablet computers are a new area for librarians. As we seek to understand this area, user feedback based on actual use in educational environments can guide funding choices. We seek to understand the curricular tie-in of the iPad among the undergraduate first-year cohort. Using focus group and survey data, this study details these use models and advances areas of mobile application development for new students.

The movement in higher education to offer sustained and targeted support for first-year students is manifested in many areas. One such manifestation is in the campus learning community with first-year experience programming that relies heavily on library support.¹ Technology initiatives often center on first-year groups in engineering, sciences, or mathematics. This study is unique in that the target of technology-enhanced learning focuses on the liberal arts and sciences curriculum. The reason for this choice stems from an already existing partnership with the liberal arts and sciences first-year learning community, for whom the University of Illinois Undergraduate Library has consistently provided training and tours for every fall semester.

The New Media Consortium’s NMC Horizon Report: 2012 Higher Education Edition indicates that mobile technologies and applications will have an effect on the way students in higher education learn. On the near-term horizon, these themes have “considerable potential for our focus areas of education.”² Specifically, “tablet computing presents new opportunities to enhance learning experiences in ways simply not possible with other devices… . Because tablets are able to tap into all the advantages that mobile apps bring to smaller devices, but in a larger format, higher education institutions are seeing them not just as an affordable solution for one-to-one learning, but also as a feature rich tool for field and lab work, often times replacing far more expensive and cumbersome equipment.”³

Literature on iPad use in libraries includes studies of its application in reference services⁴ and as circulating technology.⁵

These initiatives are starting points but have not detailed the new student perspective with in-depth focus groups for qualitative data analysis. With such an analysis we are better able to understand the curricular applications of mobile technology.

Students from the LAS101 first-year undergraduate learning community at the University of Illinois were invited to check out an iPad for one week. The first-year learning community is drawn from majors in the liberal arts and sciences. A total of twenty-four students participated in the checkout of the iPad. The library used a technology loan agreement form to ensure that students would bring back the iPad. All devices were returned by the one-week deadline. The total enrollment for LAS101 is about 1,400 new undergraduate first-year students.

The iPads were loaned to students with the set of apps that come standard with the iPad. We chose to allow students to link their iTunes accounts to the iPad during checkout and load any apps that they wanted during the course of the study. We informed students that since the technology is part of a larger loan pool, we would be wiping the contents of the iPad upon checkin. The Undergraduate Library had six iPads available for one-week checkouts. The students had to schedule a time in advance to come into the library to pick up an iPad. To bring the technology loan in line with other tech items we loan out, we did not allow renewals on the iPads, but a few students did request to keep them longer.

At the end of the semester, students were invited back to the library for three rounds of focus groups, with a total of eight students participating (see appendix 7.1 for focus group questions). After returning the iPad, all students were invited to complete an online survey. Eleven student participants completed the survey (see appendix 7.2 for survey questions). Total responses out of twenty-five students in the study were nineteen students participating in data collection.

Investigating parallel trends among the results from both our focus groups and our surveys, we found that students view the iPad as useful for in-class Internet-based functionalities. These include accessing facts related to courses and accessing online notes. This in-class functionality can also extend into making use of the instructor’s outline for the day and taking notes in class.

The main use cases of the iPad heavily feature the use of wireless access to data; in-class and out-of-class top uses included Web features (accessing online notes and looking up course terminology). We find that among this cohort the iPad is an Internet device. Without data connectivity, the iPad would lose much of its feature set for first-year student use preferences.

Configurability to individual needs was another key trend from results surrounding mobile apps. Students wanted the library to have apps relating to major fields of study that directly meet their assignment-level needs and that can connect them with specific, useful, current course information (such as professor office hours and contact information).

The use of the iPad specifically for science classes was an unexpected finding; we did not expect that students would mention in both the surveys and the focus groups that the iPad could be useful for chemistry classes and for using a 3D molecule app. As we found in our surveys, there are a number of science apps and a majority of uses for access to reference sources. Surprisingly, there were many uses of the iPad that moved the device beyond a simple tool for accessing Google—students accessed course content by way of their online course management pages and sought out online course notes in class with the iPad.

We previously thought that one week would be sufficient time with an iPad, but as we talked with the students we recognized that they might need longer checkout times to truly experiment with the iPad and take advantage of all its features. Students may be less likely to make full use of applications if they don’t have an iPad for longer than one week. Some students suggested semester checkouts, while others thought two to four weeks could be sufficient time.

We advise libraries to allow their iPads to circulate from the library with a borrower agreement form, since a library that restricts the iPad to in-library use is actually restricting students from making use of the quick Internet-based uses in class, as well as the note-taking affordances of the iPad.

Libraries will want to consider researching what course packages should be delivered to the iPad. As a start, consider a general major-specific (e.g., a chemistry major) course package, where students have the option of a particular iPad image loaded onto the iPad at the time of checkout. This added value will make the student’s time with the iPad more valuable and worthwhile in meeting curricular needs.

Various language-learning apps should be loaded onto the iPad at the time of checkout. If a student is taking a language course, we find that it makes sense that the library would develop a collection of apps that could support the language-learning needs of the curriculum. We find that for first-year students, reference sources and access to tools that support rote learning (flash cards or dictionaries) are preferred. This may change and evolve as the first-year cohort moves into major-specific courses.

By students’ reported use, the iPad does not comprehensively replace desktop functionalities: no student reported writing in-depth research papers on the iPad, and no student reported lengthy research time on the iPad. To design mobile services for the iPad is to design quick and efficient access to Internet-based information.

There is a novelty value to using new tablet computing. But this same novelty has real application to how new undergraduate students learn. It can address connectivity in the classroom and better connect students to course-related material in these environments. The iPad is well suited to meet the curricular needs and preferences of students both in and out of classes. If future tablet computers can offer fully featured productivity apps and functionalities, they will become truly valuable for curriculum-based uses.