In the opening day of a national conference on cyber-learning, Jackson State University faculty members, administrators and students took the opportunity to spread the word about the university’s iPad and e-textbook initiatives.
“This has been a four-year journey that we’ve been on in examining digitization and the modern student learner,” said Dr. Robert Blaine, the interim associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and director of the Global Inquiry Faculty Teaching Seminar at Jackson State University (JSU).
On Thursday morning, Blaine welcomed roughly 120 students, faculty members and administrators from around the U.S. to the two-day “Democratization of CyberLearning — Trailblazers Summit” being held at the Mississippi e-Center at JSU. University officials have been eager to share information about the school’s iPad and e-textbook programs and to partner with other institutions on cyber-learning projects, according to Blaine.
“What we’re really trying to do is to initiate a national conversation on what learning is in the 21st century. We realized that students are different now. They grow up in a digital world and they don’t learn the same way students did 40 years ago,” Blaine told Diverse.
“Through the summit we’re trying to (organize) a consortium of universities that are looking at 21st century learning and we really want to be a leader in that discussion,” he said.
In September 2012, the Mississippi e-Center purchased iPads to equip more than 900 JSU freshman students with the highly popular tablet computer. Under the Technology Advantage Scholarship Initiative (TASI), an iPad has been granted to each freshman student without charge. The Jackson State program is said to be the largest such initiative at a U.S. public university. Early data show the initiative has helped boost student academic performance and has improved JSU’s retention of freshman students following their first semester, university officials say.
