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Three things you might not know about tablets on campus

The revolution, according to many in educational technology, was supposed to be televised on tablets.

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Students said they want more class assignments available on tablets.

eCampus News staffers are constantly reporting on the latest trends in how tablets are used in higher education, interviewing those who advocate tablet usage above all else, and those skeptical of the transformational power of the mobile devices.

Below are three stories that might surprise educators and college students who see tablets as the unquestioned wave of higher education’s future.

One in five college students use tablets to study [2]: The presence of mobile devices has exploded on college campuses over the past five years, though just 19 percent of students say they use tablets and ubiquitous smartphones for educational purposes. Those findings and others detailing digital trends in higher education were found in a recent survey conducted by Internships.com and Millennial Branding.

The report, “The Future of Education,” [3] found that 84 percent of student respondents said they use a computer to study, while just one in five students regularly studied on their Apple iPads, iPhones, and myriad other mobile devices.

See Page 2 for our poll and two more facts about tablets that might surprise you…

Students want more class assignments available on mobile devices [4]: A survey conducted by Wakefield Research and digital course materials company CourseSmart asked 500 American college students about their dependence on devices, their opinions on eTextbooks and their views toward the rising price of a college education. The results revealed that most students own digital and mobile devices — including tablets — and would prefer that content be delivered that way.

Fifty-three percent of respondents said they would be more likely to complete required reading in time for class if it was available digitally or could be accessed on a mobile device. Eighty-eight percent of students said they have used a mobile device to study for a test at the last minute. That’s a 10 percent jump from the number of students who admitted to mobile cramming last year.

PCs more prevalent than tablets on college campuses [5]: The future in which every college student is armed with a state-of-the-art tablet computer is seemingly still a long way out. Eight in 10 students, in a survey conducted by professional services firm Deloitte [6], said they owned a laptop or desktop computer, while just 18 percent owned a tablet.

The overwhelming preference for what has become traditional campus technology shouldn’t come as a shock to educational technologists, said Brent Schoenbaum, a partner in the retail practice at Deloitte.

“The combination of smartphones and laptops makes the tablet redundant for students,” he said.

A central reason for students’ preference for PCs could have to do with a tablet’s purpose: to access apps, play games, and watch movies – not write lengthy research papers.

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