myUSF Blackboard News

The United States is slowly falling in line with the majority of the Internet connected world and moving to web browsing on their cell phone. Naturally, our students are at least representative of this trend if not slightly skewed even more in the direction of mobile internet use. Blackboard currently supports a limited iPhone app and has a more robust one in the works. We were curious which devices we should focus on if we develop our own integration or which direction to push Blackboard Inc. in the future. Here are the results (5,751 responses):

My hypothesis going into this was that the majority of students would not have a smart phone. It’s important to note that the question is forward looking. It asks about a future purchase, so perhaps most people are thinking about buying one but don’t have one yet.

Given the longevity of Blackberry I expected to see it dominate, but the iPhone comes very close. I suspect this being asked of students is probably skewing this since they tend to be biased a bit toward Apple. The real disappointment here is the G1/Google Phone, but it seems to be part of a larger trend.

The plain cellphone and none at all is a fairly large number and I wonder what we can bring to these people? Watch this blog for a possible answer to that question very soon.

This week we look at podcast subscriptions. Here are the results:

Like most of our polls, this topic wasn’t randomly decided. It highlights a couple currents with which we are dealing. First there is iTunes U, an educational podcasting program of which USF participates in somewhat. We are also considering doing a Blackboard News / How-to series of podcasts and wanted to see what our potential market might be.

To me the wild speculation for this poll rests with the first two entries for 1-3 and 4-10. I expected to see 4-10 a larger selection than 1-3 since it seems that if you’ve started following podcasts, you would quickly branch out to half a dozen or more. I know this is the trend I followed: I started with The Instance and I quickly increased that to a dozen, and now I subscribe to about 30.

I wonder if this is indicative of the increased purchase of the iPhone. Perhaps a large number of those who select 1-3 are just getting into this new media. If so, this means we may be seeing a growth in podcast listeners. Besides the entertainment value, students will certainly find valuable study material in offerings from other Universities like Stanford which has a huge podcasting presence. I hope USF’s own iTunes U expands beyond our Library and College of Education soon so we can offer our own content to the world.

Our second student straw poll inquires about the familiarity with the Google Apps used at USF. Sample size is 1,540.

Here are the results:

I’m not too surprised by these numbers. Experience tells me that most users aren’t the type to explore, so most students probably click on email, never noticing they have access to these other tools. I do wonder about the 11% that didn’t find any of the tools useful. Do students have no need for a robust online calendar or sharing documents easily?

As a result of this poll, we have added a new module to myUSF which more prominently displays links to the Google Calendar and and Docs.

Check it out and enjoy organizing your months and collaborating live on your group assignments! You can also access these tools directly via mail.usf.edu.

This is the first of a regular series called “Unscientific Poll!” You can expect wild extrapolations and blatantly drawn lines between correlation and causation. You’ve been warned. Hopefully, it’ll illicit at least a few “Hmm”s here and there.

Our first poll was asked of students (very loosely defined) with a sample size of 4,199.

Here are the results:

More than half of students would like to see some integration of social networking with myUSF, but a fair percentage (%43.58) just want it to serve up course content. Two of these, at least minimally, exist. There is a Facebook app as well as a somewhat limited iPhone app. At BBWorld this year, there were some very nice announcements regarding mobile access to Blackboard, so I think the iPhone application will improve greatly in the near future.

I’m surprised about the low count for Twitter. Is it difficult to imagine what that integration would be like? Maybe the adoption of Twitter among our students is very low or they don’t take it “seriously?”

Thanks to Texas Women’s University for the idea for this poll.