Mobile devices and wifi traffic: Reality hits home

As the desire for new technology grows on campus, with faculty (and students) demanding more and more options, the process of support becomes ever more complex and layered. Last week I finally met with a few folks from our campus networking team; in Spring semester as we tried to troubleshoot some classroom connectivity issues we all realized that there was a lot of confusion about what's going on with instruction these days. After many emails back and forth we finally resolved a pretty disruptive issue for a very dedicated professor.

In my job, I sort of straddle the two worlds of hardware and software. I've tried to build a good relationship with the classroom support team who manage the hardware in the classrooms, as well as with faculty who use the software. But I realized this Spring that the people who plan for and install the wifi on campus don't know me -- or the tools I support. So when our clickers team was notified that there were major wifi issues in a large lecture hall this past semester, attempts to quickly resolve the issue were frustrating and anything but quick.

I work for a large university, so perhaps my experience is not the same as for folks who are more involved with the network engineers on campus. But what I see, from my experience, is that if we don't involve the people responsible for all the required parts of the looming shift to BYOD and mobile learning in every stage of planning and preparation, there are going to be a lot of frustrated faculty (and students). If you are in the instructional technology support field, they will be knocking at your door and filling up your voicemail. Hopefully, sharing our experience will help to head off some of the frustration on other campuses.

The lecture hall in this case seats about 250. The instructor uses TurningPoint polling software and allows students to use either clickers or smart phones via ResponseWare, and although we don't have a figure on how many choose ResponseWare my observation is that it's about half the class. Now, this lecture hall is relatively new -- that is, it was built within the last 10 years. However, the design is already woefully outdated. There were only 5 wifi access points (APs) in the room -- and 4 of them were located at the back of the room. This means that not only are students in the room using them for class, but so are those sitting in the hallway on the other side of the wall -- waiting for class to end and watching videos, checking email, Facebook, etc. etc.

In fact, with the general rule of thumb being that there should be 20-30 clients using any one AP, here's what a test found on an average day:

AP1: 52 clients
AP2: 88 clients
AP3: 37 clients
AP4: 56 clients
AP5: 4 clients

Why is AP 5 so low? Because it's the one near the front of the room. One of the first suggestions we received from the engineering team was "ask the students to move up to the front of the room."

Have you stopped laughing yet?

I wasn't in my current position when the room was designed, and I have to wonder what the rationale was for putting 5 APs in the room at all. It clearly wasn't designed with the idea that every student in the class would be using them, at least not at the same time. So perhaps it was just part of the effort over the past couple of years to provide campus-wide wifi. I know that the engineering team has reasons for putting APs where they do  -- I don't mean to imply they were randomly placed in this room. But was there any thought about how they would be used?  There was never going to be enough room on 5 APs for every student to use them, so faculty couldn't have used them in instruction. And what other purpose is there, in a classroom or lecture hall?

The good news is that the networking team is installing more APs in the room, and I am going to work with them to test them late this summer so we know we have adequate coverage before Fall term begins.  So that's one room down. How many more to go?

Of course, no one can really predict the future with instructional technology. But I can tell you that while no one is coming to me and asking me about other types of clickers, I do have emails and calls weekly from faculty who have heard about "XYZ mobile polling and do you know anything about it?"  So from where I sit, the need for more wifi access and more understanding of the tools by all teams involved in support are going to keep growing and growing.

So, if you haven't already, get to know your network engineers. It turns out they are frustrated about being in the dark about instruction. And it turns out they think ResponseWare is pretty cool.

This first post is, heh, "alarming"

I sit down to write the very first post of a brand new blog and the fire alarm immediately begins to ring. My colleagues and I troop outside and soon find out it was a false (or very minor) alarm.  Some might see this as a sign from above, before I launch this new blog: "Stop now before it's too late!" But instead I spend the time outside thinking about the blog, so when I get back to my desk I dive right back in again.

With so many options now available for in-class student polling, I am constantly being asked by my faculty "What do you know about XYZ polling?"  We officially support only one polling option on our campus, that of Turning Technologies, but faculty are free to use any other product they wish. We can't promise technical support for any of these other products, but inevitably I am asked about them, so I do try to keep up to speed with new and emerging polling products.

And "speed" is the key word here, because there seems to be a new polling option flying onto the landscape every day. All the new ones seem to be free for faculty, which is certainly enticing, but many are incredibly expensive for the student. And most of the new ones are web-based. I love that idea, except that it means they rely on a wireless infrastructure that was designed for traffic that is the Internet equivalent of a lazy Sunday afternoon drive in the country, and not the full on interstate of fast cars and big trucks, otherwise known as YouTube and Facebook, plus active polling applications.

This is an incredibly exciting time to be working with student engagement tools. Keeping up with the latest ones is a challenge, but when I see the dedication and commitment of faculty who are looking at these products in search of ways to better reach their students while also lifting up their own teaching skills -- it's a challenge that's worth the effort. So I am constantly looking into new instructional technology tools -- and old. Because that fire drill at the beginning of this blog reminds me that technology is a fickle thing. No amount of flashy new polling tools will replace the need for good instruction and the ability to teach -- or blog -- on the fly.