iPad Integration: Mobile Learning Issues in University Classes

This is a report on an early experiment with iPad 2’s in a university setting. In this action research project, 19 students in an Academic Reading and Writing class for those with high-level English were given iPad 2’s for five weeks for their own personal use. As ICU has campus-wide Wi-Fi, this effectively made every classroom a type of computer room, whereas actual computer rooms were in such short supply and high demand that other classes were limited to one session per week in a computer room, even when the classes met five times a week. These iPad equipped students were also doing multimedia project work in addition to their normal class tasks. This study aimed to find out their reactions to the iPad experience in their academic and multimedia work in the hope that the results would influence the adoption of multimedia tablets like iPads at ICU in the future.