Need something to keep students alert and focused on your lesson?
Need a tool that turns on your projector with one touch of a fingertip?
How about something to keep sports fans excited about the next game?
There’s an app for that.
Apps are popping up everywhere in education, and are branching outside of the college classroom.
I recently spoke with Amos Wasgatt, Sales Executive for Apperian (a mobile app management company) to gain more insight in the role apps play in higher education.
To my surprise, Wasgatt said apps play less of a role in today’s teaching and learning.
Instead, he said that apps are more geared towards personal improvement.
“It’s not necessarily always about the teaching and learning, it’s more about life improvement while on campus,” Wasgatt said. “It’s more about student life apps; making sure students have the bus app, a cafeteria app.”
Wasgatt also said that today’s college students expect their colleges to support mobile solutions, and provide apps to maintain the way of life that they’re used to.
“Right now, you’ve got a generation of kids that is going into schools and doesn’t know life without an iPod, iPhone, etc.,” he said. “They’re expecting to do everything [with apps] in their everyday life today – order food, order Uber, do whatever they want on their mobile device at the touch of a button…They’re not expecting to go into school and working on a Dell laptop. They’re expecting to use Google Docs to write their paper or whatever it might be on those mobile devices, that’s to be expected at this point and what we’re going to see more and more of.”
When Wasgatt said this, I thought about the culture of today’s college students.
According to Wasgatt, students seem to expect to run their lives with apps, and more than likely will expect future work places to incorporate this lifestyle in their spaces.
But, I wonder: can college students learn the ropes of campus life and function without apps? Is this wave of students too dependent on apps to show them the way? And if they truly are dependent on apps, are their expectations acceptable, and will these expectations extend to future generations?
When I think back on my own college years (2008-2012), all I had was my basic phone and that dreaded Dell laptop. They suited me fine, and I did well in school.
Up until last fall, I lived in a world without apps. Even though I was in the minority there, I was ok with my app-less life.
I couldn’t imagine a life with apps. They seemed like an unnecessary luxury – I wondered, where were our caveman instincts to keep us alive and entertained? Is everyone my age really that lazy and helpless that they need to depend on a device to live?
Then I got my first smart phone in October 2014.
Now, ten months later, I admit I am an app user. There are a small handful of apps I use – one to print out pictures at my local drug store, Words with Friends to keep my vocabulary sharp, and yoga and breathing apps to stay calm during a stressful week.
Even though I am no longer a student, Wasgatt’s point rings true in my case – apps are boosting my life improvement. I enjoy these apps, and they are convenient to access.
And, I proved my own judgements wrong: I’m not lazy or dependent on those apps for entertainment, and while my work place does not provide apps, it more than welcomes the use of apps to help get our jobs done. Apps are there to help me live a better life, and provide tools I did not know I could or want to use to continue making life easier and more enjoyable.
These are tools I can keep in one device resting in the palm of my hand, that I can call up to start improving my well-being in a snap.
As apps advance and become more commonplace on campuses, I think Wasgatt is right – students will expect colleges to provide and support them. The work world will graduate from Blackberries and other basic technology to smart devices and, ultimately, apps.
And, as long as colleges, employers and students are on the same wave length for app demands, I think these expectations are ok.
Following Wasgatt’s insight, I think apps will help today’s college students learn, live and work smarter instead of harder, and will even contribute to the infinitely evolving technology uses.
I think today’s students will even play a role in the next generation of technological advances, especially those that will surpass and outdate apps. They will be key players in shaping the college structures and technology demands of the future.
Maybe they will even question the new technoology’s relevancy, acceptability and necessity in human culture.
And maybe they will have the answers.
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