How Could iPhones Change A University?

In the late spring of 2007, roughly two months before Apple released the first generation iPhone, Roberts and a few members of his ACU IT team, along with various faculty members, gathered for a meeting to discuss the future of technology at ACU. At that time, rumors surrounding a possible iPod/cell phone hybrid from Apple were rampant, and the subject came up after the meeting. Roberts had read the rumors and blog himself, but the excitement from his fellow ACU staffers that day really grabbed his attention.

"That casual conversation drove us a little deeper. As we started unpacking that a little bit and reading more about it, we started coming to the conclusion that if even half of the rumors were true, [the iPhone was] going to be a pretty compelling device," Roberts said.

Fortunately, one of the meeting attendees that day was an English professor who went on to write a 40-page white paper on what he and others thought a campus populated with students and faculty who all had iPhone-like-devices would look like. The paper was published a month later. (A video of the university's collective vision was also eventually filmed.)

Another coincidence: A number of ACU representatives, include Roberts, were scheduled to meet with Apple for an executive briefing just a couple of weeks after the white paper was published. So the ACU folks decided to bring the paper with them, to see what Apple had to say. This was the real beginning of Mobile ACU, as Apple was equally excited about the possibilities, and the company's confirmation of the ACU staffers' ideas made the whole scenario seem more tangible, .

Shortly afterward, Apple released the iPhone and ACU immediately placed an order for 30 devices. Roberts and his team also issued a call for proposals to faculty members, requesting their specific ideas on what they would do with the devices in their classrooms.

"To be honest with you, I'd hoped we'd get 10 or 12 [proposals]." Roberts said. "We got close to 180 responses back. More than half of our faculty responded, and we knew we were on to something."

Roberts and his team then distributed a number of iPhones to interested parties to collect initial responses and see whether or not the devices could meet the users' high expectations. In late November and early October, the first reviews started coming in, and they couldn't have been more positive: ACU faculty loved the iPhone.

Roberts took a cue from the early reviews, and selected about 30 projects from the proposals, which he and his team started working on immediately

At that point, ACU's tech team was feeling more and more confident that iPhone would become an important component of the university future technology strategy. Dr. James Langford, ACU's director of Web integration and programming, along with his development team, started working on the beginnings of an iPhone-optimized mobile site and associated application.

"We'd thought about the idea of mobility for a number of years, everything from laptops to PDAs and BlackBerrys. The tipping point on the iPhone for us was the fact that it has a truly, fully functional Web browser," Roberts says. "Obviously the Flash component is missing, but other than that it's a fully functioning Web browser. That's what made us go ahead and move forward with the iPhone."

By February, just seven months after the iPhone hit the United States, the university was so impressed with Apple's device that it committed to distributing iPhones and iPod touches to all incoming freshman in 2008.

  The Custom iPhone App: Mobile ACU >>