Through Stony Brook University’s Mobile/Digital Now (MDN) initiative, 185 EOP/AIM freshmen received iPads this July as they began their four-year journey at the EOP/AIM Pre-Freshman Summer Academy, a five-week program of intense academics to help prepare them for the upcoming academic year.
The iPads are part of the University’s commitment to the EOP/AIM program, which provides educationally related support services and supplemental financial assistance to students whose educational and economic circumstances have limited their post-secondary educational opportunities.
Additionally the iPads support Stony Brook faculty in the appropriate utilization of technology to enhance their teaching, control the costs of learning materials for students through eTexts, increase access to critical courses that in turn enhance both retention and four-year graduation rates, and equip the University community with the latest mobile devices that will aid in future academic success.
The iPads were funded by Stony Brook University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., MD, and by the University’s Division of Information Technology (DoIT), which is leading the MDN initiative to transform the academic experience of students by reinventing physical and virtual learning environments, optimizing wireless access, inspiring instructors to move to digital content, and leveraging mobile access across the student lifecycle.
DoIT also teamed up with the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics to distribute iPads to student-athletes from the football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, women’s soccer, men’s soccer and volleyball teams.
“We want to give students the tools they need to be successful during their four years at Stony Brook,” said Cole Camplese, Vice President for Information Technology and CIO. “We really feel that the future of education is one that is rooted in access to content, materials and resources in a mobile/digital environment.”
“Our focus on a Mobile/Digital First strategy is to enhance technology use by faculty in ways that will benefit students, but also hopefully benefit faculty as well, because many of these new approaches are more efficient and allow faculty more productive time when they’re implemented well,” said Stony Brook University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr, MD. “There’s real opportunity out there to try and utilize some of these technologies and it’s our job to help provide the resources and the support to make it possible.”
“So far, there haven’t been any questions from the students about how to use the iPads,” said Diana Voss, Manager of Academic Technologies in DoIT’s Teaching, Learning and Technology Department. “We sent out a survey asking if they’ve used any of the apps and all who responded said they were actively using Blackboard Mobile, Gmail, and Office 365 (Microsoft Word) to write papers. It was great to hear that they figured it out on their own.”
The MDN iPad program will be expanding in the future. If there is a compelling use case for the use of an iPad as a faculty, staff or student, please contact the Office of the CIO at cio@stonybrook.edu.
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