iTeaching and Learning: Collegiate Instruction Incorporating Mobile Tablets

Abstract

Mobile tablets will revolutionize higher education instruction across the academy, in some instances providing new solutions to accepted instructional limitations, in others eliminating unacknowledged hindrances, and in still others creating new challenges. Instructors at Indiana University--Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) have been using iPads for instruction, including library instruction, since the fall of 2010. An eight-member group of faculty in art, music, communication studies, tourism management, physical education, education, organizational leadership and supervision, and the University Library have pioneered the institution's use of mobile tablets, iPads, in the classroom. Chapter 9 of Library Technology Reports (vol. 48, no. 8) "Rethinking Reference and Instruction with Tablets" provides insights into how these and other disciplines are using iPads to create new transformative learning experiences. This chapter includes findings of a study on student perceptions of learning and engagement during instruction incorporating the use of iPads across disciplines.