Netflix, Smartphones Eat Up Bandwidth

The Netflix video-streaming service and smartphones are the two biggest drains on campus bandwidth, according to a report on residential networks (ResNet).

Netflix was named the biggest content threat to bandwidth capacity by 88% of the IT, housing, and business officers who participated in the State of ResNet 2018 Report, while smartphones were listed as the largest consumers of bandwith by 73% of respondents.

The smartphone percentage was an 11% increase over the 2017 report, with desktop computers and laptops finishing second (65%) and smart TVs in third (59%). At the same time, online learning tools and interactive digital textbooks were considered a threat by 33% and 14% of respondents, respectively.

Almost every respondent said their institution viewed “high-performing” ResNet as essential to attracting and keeping students on campus. Ninety-six percent of housing administrators said quality ResNet was “very important,” while 92% of IT respondents and 90% of business officers said the same thing.

At the same time, 41% of the respondents admitted their schools were shaping and limiting bandwidth, up 10% from the year before. There was also a double-digit increase in blocking activities such as peer-to-peer sharing and music downloading, from 34% in 2017 to 44% in 2018.

Digital Learning Tools Are Helping Students

A 2017 survey of chief academic officers (CAOs) found that more than 85% said they believe digital learning tools make learning more efficient and effective for students. In addition, 92% said adaptive learning has great potential to improve learning outcomes and nearly 90% would like their faculty to use the technology more often in entry-level and gateway courses.

Students clearly agree, as 94% responding to the fourth-annual McGraw-Hill Education digital student trends survey said using digital learning technologies helped them retain new concepts and 60% said the tools helped to improve their grades.

“Powerful digital learning technology can customize the learning experience for every student, helping him or her understand challenging concepts more fully and empowering them to improve their classroom performance,” said Scott Virkler, chief product officer, McGraw-Hill Education. “As these solutions continue to make inroads on college campuses, we look forward to seeing even more improvements in student learning outcomes.”

Students said digital learning tools were helpful in preparing for tests and exams and completing assignments, and made self-study easier. The survey also reported a majority of students use laptops more than printed materials to complete homework and in test preparation, while just 38% said they used their smartphone on assignments or for test prep.

On the other hand, the CAOs told pollsters that students without the necessary digital devices were holding back campus efforts to go more digital or all-digital.

“Owning a digital device—a laptop or tablet—really is essential for digital access,” said Kenneth C. Green, founding director of The Campus Computing Project. “Although well-intended, extended hours in campus computer labs do not adequately serve the needs or the schedules of full- and part-time students who have families, jobs, and other community commitments beyond their college coursework.”

Take-Home Devices vs. ‘Summer Slide’

More school districts are allowing students to take home school-issued devices over the summer break to reduce learning losses known as the “summer slide.”

There is no research yet to back the success of the practice, but educators say they hope that letting students use school laptops or tablets to extend learning through the summer will bridge the gap between haves and have-nots by providing access to students who otherwise wouldn’t have it.

“Summer is the most unequal time in America,” Matthew Boulay, interim CEO of the National Summer Learning Association, told NPR. “I think we tend to have this idyllic view of what childhood summers are, but the reality is that for kids living in poverty, summer can be a time of isolation and hunger.”

There are, however, observers concerned that districts need to supply parents with instructions on proper device use at home so the technology isn’t wasted on games rather than educational content and so it doesn’t pull kids away from family activities during the summer.

Study Looks at Classroom Tech

A new survey from Campus Technology found that traditional laptops and desktops are the most common forms of instructional technology used in the classroom. Both devices were used in 82% of the time, according to a poll of faculty members from across the country.

More than 500 instructors participated in the study, including 49% who worked in the field of higher education for 21 years or longer. Nearly 70% of the respondents worked at public institutions, with another 23% teaching at private, not-for-profit colleges.

Laptops were ranked as either “essential” or “valuable” by 95%, followed by high-end computers with faster processors, more storage, and dedicated graphic cards by 76% of the respondents. Instructors said they used tech for instruction about 62% of the time, while one in 10 reported using it all the time. A quarter said they used it at least 75% of the time.

Instructors are less thrilled with mobile phones in the classroom. About one-fifth allow their use and 57% allow them with limitations. Another 22% forbid the devices completely.

When it came to use of digital course materials, 74% reported using a mix of digital and paper-based textbooks. A similar number said they used open educational resources to take advantage of free and low-cost content.

To Ban or Not to Ban Computers

Studies have shown that students using computers in the classroom tend to do poorly on tests when compared to peers who take notes by hand. Research conducted at West Point found the same results, but did it in a way that could make a more compelling argument for banning the devices from classrooms altogether.

In a study of 726 sophomore cadets in 50 offerings of a course in introductory economics, researchers were able to assign students at random to versions of the course that either banned all devices, allowed unrestricted use, or gave permission to have a tablet computer face-up on the student’s desk. All students then took the same exam at the end of the semester.

This large-scale randomized control trial (RCT) method of study made it possible for researchers to compare the same measures of learning for all students. While the results clearly suggest that banning computers in the classroom makes sense, it might not make great policy, according to Tania Lombrozo, professor of psychology, University of California, Berkeley.

“The findings to date suggest that banning computers from classrooms may be the most sensible policy to adopt,” she wrote in a column for National Public Radio. “But there’s a more general policy that’s also worth keeping in mind: the policy of constant experimentation and improvement. We can’t always approximate an ideal RCT, but we can stifle opportunities for progress by applying a policy uniformly, without variation. We can only inch our way beyond the status quo by trying out different options, subjecting them to rigorous comparison, and repeating as needed. That means entertaining a new suite of potential policies, not just discarding the superseded.”

School Laptop Programs Are Working

A Michigan State University study has shown that students who receive laptops from their schools do better in class. Researchers saw higher test scores in English, math, science, and writing when students were given laptops, but the programs need to include one-to-one program support for both students and teachers.

“In the past couple of decades, one-to-one laptop programs have spread widely, but so has debate about whether they are cost-effective and beneficial to educational outcomes,” Binbin Zheng, assistant professor of educational technology at MSU and lead author of the paper, said in an article for eSchool News. “I believe this technology, if implemented correctly, is worth the cost and effort because it lifts student achievement, enhances engagement and enthusiasm among students, improves teacher-student relationships, and promotes 21st-century skills such as technological proficiency and problem-solving.”

The catch is proper implementation, according to Zheng. She found that educational outcomes improve when there is teacher buy-in, enough technical support and professional development for instructors, and suitable curriculum.

“Just putting a laptop before a student doesn’t really help them with anything,” she said. “Technology should not be implemented for technology’s sake.”

More Malware Attacks, Harder to Detect

Malware attacks are happening more often and are harder to detect, according to the State of the Endpoint Report from the Ponemon Institute. Of the 694 IT security administrators surveyed, the number of respondents with a strategy in place to deal with malware fell from 43% in 2015 to 38% this year.

The report found that 68% had experienced distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, where multiple systems are used to target a single system. In addition, 80% said that they believed their mobile endpoints—defined as laptops, desktops, smartphones, printers, POS machines, or ATMs—had been targets, up from 58% in 2015.

As troubling as that may sound, a bigger concern involves employees. More than 80% of respondents said the biggest threat to endpoint security was negligent or careless employees who don’t follow security policies.

“You’ve got how many different types of laptops? How many versions of Windows? How many applications for those devices? How many phone types, etc.?” asked Michael Davis, chief technology officer of the security start-up firm CounterTack in an article for InformationWeek. “IT has to struggle with all of that variation, while also trying to enforce a standard set of security protocols. And then, on top of that, they have to deal with the end user, so it’s very difficult to enforce anything, even from a purely technology perspective.”

Production Trumps Consumption

One conundrum in the digital education world is consumption vs. production, according to Inside Higher Ed’s tech blogger Joshua Kim. Consuming content is more convenient on mobile devices, while producing that content is easier on a laptop or desktop computer.

“What this means for education, I think, is that we need to design our content primarily for mobile,” Kim wrote. “Anything that has to do with consumption will occur on a small touchscreen. Our text, presentations, and videos all need to be designed mobile first.”

However, don’t toss the laptop just yet. The keyboard makes the device much more important in the digital world because keyboards on mobile devices are simply too small to be useful. And, to Kim, writing remains at the heart of education.

“After having spent a few weeks with the new $169 iPad Pro Smart Keyboard (the combined case and keyboard), I can tell you that it is not something that you will want to use for any serious writing,” he wrote. “We should be suspicious of any education program that is mobile-only. Mobile-first, sure, but not mobile-only. Any good postsecondary program should stress production over consumption.”

Device-Agnostic Tools Needed for BYOD

College students are bringing many different types of electronic devices with them to campus. Colleges and universities are grappling with how to accommodate all those gadgets.

The many devices on the market means educators have to create lessons that work on all of them, whether students are toting a laptop, smartphone, tablet, or all three. The age of the device even comes into play, because operating systems change so frequently.

“These devices all have different quirks,” Gauri Reyes, CEO of Triple Point Advisors, said in an article in eCampus News, “and that makes it hard to predict which ones will ultimately be brought into the classrooms, who will be using which ones, and who needs to know what about the devices and the capabilities.”

Device-agnostic applications are being built to provide a solution. The tools are compatible with most operating systems, helping instructors and students work together without wasting class time or IT resources.

“Start by taking the most popular devices that are out there and making sure your applications, lesson plans, videos, or other content work on those devices,” Reyes advised. “Just make the assumption that whatever you’re developing or using has to work on iOS, Android, or another platform, and then create an environment where your students can learn, engage, collaborate, and communicate effectively.”

Old-Fashioned Note-Taking Works

One solution for increasing student success has little to do with interactive content and electronic course materials. It’s as simple as taking better notes.

Carol E. Holstead, associate professor of journalism, University of Kansas, Lawrence, decided she had had enough of students mesmerized by their laptop computer screens instead of listening to her lectures, so she banned the devices from her classroom. She did continue using PowerPoint presentations to outline her lecture and provide examples, but also instructed her students they needed to be more selective in writing down important points.

“It turned out my theory was right and now is supported by research,” Holstead wrote in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “A study published last year in Psychological Science showed that students who write out notes longhand remember conceptual information better than those who take notes on a computer.”

The problem for students who used laptops is they become so intent on capturing every word of a lecture they don’t always listen to what is being said. Students who used paper and pen to take notes were more selective because they couldn’t write fast enough, allowing them to retain more information and understand it better, according to the research.

Holstead ended her first semester without laptops by having students fill out a questionnaire. Nearly 52% of the 95 responding students said they paid more attention without a computer in front of them. More importantly, test scores went up in her classes.

“Their answers reinforced the note-taking study,” Holstead said. “The students who tried to transcribe my lectures, even without a laptop, hated taking notes longhand. The students who figured out how to take selective notes liked it.”

Tech Buyers Want Multichannel Options

Most college students love the latest electronic gadget and many will be in the market for something new this holiday season. A new report on retail technology trends found most buyers like shopping both online and in-store and aren’t that interested in wearable tech yet.

Purch, an online publishing company, surveyed more than 3,000 “tech enthusiasts” to track consumer-technology buying trends and identify top brands. It found that 74% of respondents planned to shop both online and in stores for their tech purchases, while just 4% said they would limit their shopping to traditional bricks-and-mortar locations.

Smartphones, laptops, and tablets were the top product categories. Half of the respondents said they would buy a Samsung product, followed by Asus (40%), Microsoft (38%), and Apple (28%). Fewer than 10% of the respondents said they would consider a smartwatch (9%) or fitness device (8%).

The report found that tech consumers relied on product reviews (86%) and articles by experts (74%) to help them make their buying decisions. Social media (18%) and advertising (12%) were at the bottom of the sources list.

“Consumers value a multichannel shopping environment and they look to product reviews and expert content to guide their purchase decisions,” said Purch CEO Greg Mason. “You can’t deny the authority and influences these resources have on technology enthusiasts in particular.”

How Educational Technology Is Being Used

A 2014 Student Watch poll from OnCampus Research reported that 91% of all college students own a laptop and 81% own a smartphone. What they are doing with those devices in the classroom may come as a surprise.

To get a sense of how devices are being used in the classroom, this graphic from information gathered from the Pew Research Center, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and other studies illustrates the technology and the issues students and faculty have with it. For instance, 75% of the students said they are bringing their laptops into the classroom more often, but not necessarily to do things related to classwork.

While 83% of the students said they used their laptops to take class notes and 81% said they send emails during class, more than 40% said they used their laptops to surf the Internet and 25% played games. They also reported spending just six minutes each day on school-based emails and complained about professors sending emails.

The faculty reported that the benefits of having electronic devices in the classroom include gaming, online simulations, blogging and forums, and online learning. However, among the negatives are the distractions they cause, cheating, and lower grades. 

Laptop Is Tool of Choice for College Students

College students certainly love their laptops. In fact, 25% of the respondents to a back-to-school technology usage survey conducted by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) said they would choose their computer over a family member or beer if they were stranded on a desert island.

The survey found that 85% of U.S. college students own a laptop and 41% consider their laptop their most important possession over their car or television. More than half of the students surveyed said they planned to buy new machine before heading back to school in the fall, with a third of those students considering a new laptop purchase.

Fast performance is the No. 1 consideration for students when buying a laptop (40%), followed by price (26%) and battery life (25%). Students preferred laptops to tablets by a two-to-one margin, according to the study.

“Students expect more from their computers than ever before—they want them to be equally as good at streaming their favorite TV show as they are at crunching numbers in a math class,” Gabe Gravning, director of marketing at AMD, said in a press release.

Laptop Note-Takers Don't Absorb Much

Dan Rockmore, a professor of computer science at Dartmouth College, made his case for banning laptops in the classroom in The New Yorker magazine. A study done at Michigan State University suggested that Rockmore might have a point.

The MSU study focused on the nonacademic Internet use of 500 students in an introductory psychology class and used ACT scores to determine the intellectual ability of each student. Past research indicated smarter students tend to be better at filtering out distractions and score better on tests.

Instead, the study found the more all students used the Internet for nonacademic purposes in class, the lower exam scores. It also showed that students didn’t believe their Internet use in class would have an effect on their classroom performance.

Another study found that students using laptops for taking notes write more but retain less than those who write out their notes with pen and paper. Researchers found that students who type notes don’t always mentally process the information.

“They tend to try to write everything down instead of trying to sort out what’s important and what’s not,” Pam Mueller, a Princeton grad student, told The Toronto Star. Mueller teamed with UCLA psychology professor Daniel Oppenheimer on the study The Pen is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking.

Multiple Devices Use Rising

A study by the consulting firm Deloitte found that 37% of American consumers own a tablet, smartphone, and laptop computer. That’s 42% higher than the previous year, according to Deloitte’s eighth annual Digital Democracy Survey.

“At least for now, the tablet is not being viewed as a replacement for a laptop, but rather for its own distinctive uses,” Gerald Belson, the U.S. media and entertainment sector leader at Deloitte, told Marketing Daily. “The primary uses are around watching video, as well as Internet activity and games.”

Women make up 45% of the group using multiple devices. In addition, the percentage of people streaming content rose from 17% in 2012 to 32% in 2013. Belson added that millennials are spending more time watching content on devices other than television, even if the content was originally created for television.

The survey of 2,000 consumers in the United States also found that just 6% of respondents with a pay-TV service were thinking about stopping that service over the next 12 months. At the same time, 86% admitted to multitasking on other devices while watching television, with just 22% doing something directly related to the program they were watching.

“The second-screen experience hasn’t been compelling enough for a majority of consumers to link the second screen to the primary content,” Belson said. “The good news from an opportunity standpoint is that the second device is in consumers’ hands and it tends to be an interactive device.”

Tablets May Not Be Killing Off Laptops

The Case of the Dwindling Laptop Sales is still an open mystery. It turns out tablets may not be the culprit after all, at least according to a new survey of tablet owners by market research firm IDC.

Many technology-watchers, noting that tablet sales were rising at about the same pace as laptop sales were falling, assumed there was a direct correlation between the two. The IDC study, conducted last April, contradicts that. Just 8.7% of survey respondents said they bought a new tablet as a laptop replacement while 58.5% specifically purchased the tablet to use in combination with their laptop.

The survey sample wasn’t all that large—only 299 adults—but it shows that consumers buy different devices for different reasons, and don’t want to ditch any of them yet. “A huge percentage of people still see a lot of value in a laptop for one kind of app or service they use on it. Would they want to do their taxes on a tablet? They haven’t quite made the leap to being comfortable with a mobile device like a tablet,” IDC analyst Tom Mainelli told Computerworld.

College students probably fit into that category. A tablet is easier to tote around campus for checking course updates in the learning management system in between classes, for example. A laptop is better for working on papers and projects.

That still leaves the mystery of why laptop sales are down. It’s possible tablets do share some of the blame. After buying the latest tablet, purchasers may not feel the need to upgrade their laptops to a new model. Also, those who use their tablets on the go, such as students, may find their laptops last longer parked at home where there’s reduced risk of theft or breakage.

Students Still Taking PCs to School

While sales of tablet computers continue to grow worldwide, many college students still prefer to go the PC route. In its annual back-to-school survey, Deloitte found that while 82% of college students own a personal computer and 80% have a smartphone, just 18% bring a tablet to campus.

“Unless you’re shooting for a degree in Angry Birds, tablets are a horrible back-to-school purchase,” said Louis Ramirez, a features writer for DealNews.com, in a MarketWatch article. “You can’t write a 10-page research paper with an iPad.”

Most of functions that make a tablet computer so popular for home use—playing games, surfing the Internet, checking social media sites, and e-mail—can be done just as easily on a student’s laptop. Students also find taking classroom notes using their laptop or desktop keyboard much more convenient, while a bigger screen and better audio makes watching a movie or listening to music a better experience on a laptop.

Another PC selling point for students is price, particularly during the back-to-school sales push when manufacturers offer special incentives on desktop and laptop models, making desktop PCs available for as low as $200.

“The desktop PC is simply a wiser, more realistic investment for any student this fall,” Ramirez said.

More Studies on Digital Natives

It seems as if another study on college students and their use of digital devices is released every other day.

For instance, a new report from Wakefield Research found that 99% of current students own at least one digital device and 68% use it at least three times a day. In fact, 47% of responding students said they check their electronic device every 10 minutes, a 9% increase over 2011 survey results.

At 93%, laptops topped the list of devices owned by students, but smartphone and tablet ownership saw significant increases. Smartphone ownership rose from 47% in 2011 to 78% in the current survey, while tablets went from 7% to 35%.

The study also showed 90% of students sometimes fail to complete reading assignments, but 53% said they would be more likely to complete the reading if it were available on mobile devices. Also, 59% of responding students prefer bringing their laptop to class instead of a textbook; 88% have used a mobile device for last-minute studying; and 79% of respondents said they’ve used an e-textbook, compared to 63% in 2011.

Then there’s a study done at the City University of New York (CUNY) that found students still say they prefer reading academic texts in print. Student Reading Practices inPrint and Electronic Media tracked the reading habits of 17 students over the course of two weeks and reported that most used electronic devices for pleasure reading, but switched back to paper for academic content. 

Multitasking During a Lecture Distracts

One concern instructors have about students using electronic devices in the classroom is that they can be a distraction. A new study from York University, Toronto, found that it’s not only a distraction to the student using the device, but also to their peers nearby.

The study asked undergraduate-level students to use a laptop to take notes during a class lecture. Half the class was assigned to do tasks that mimicked what a typical student might do while browsing the web as the class was going on. The entire class was given a comprehension test at the end of the lecture, with the multitasking students receiving lower grades than the other half of the class.

While those results are not particularly surprising, the study also found that students sitting close to multitasking students also did poorly on the test, even though they had been instructed to take notes with pencil and paper.

“The results of our experiment confirm that multitasking on a laptop reduces a student’s ability to comprehend lecture content,” Tina West, co-author of the study and doctoral student at York University, said in a release. “A more surprising finding was that students sitting nearby a multitasker also underperformed, despite actively trying to focus on the lecture. These students were placed at a disadvantage because of the choices of their peers.”

As part of the study, the researchers created a list of frequently asked questions which describes the problems and provides solutions teachers can consider to help keep their students’ attention during lectures.

Recyclable Laptop

Wired Campus recently featured an interesting story about a prototype of a recyclable laptop that was created by graduate students at Stanford University and Aalto University in Finland. Many of the computer components can be recycled along with other household items while the screen and circuit board need to be sent to separate recycling facilities. According to the article, there are some small technical hurdles that need to be worked out before the computer can be produced.