The changing roles of faculty and students when mobile devices enter the higher education classroom

Mobile devices pose a challenge for most faculty members in higher education as they view the device as disruptive and in competition with the work to be completed in the classroom. The goal of this chapter is to examine the implementation of HTC tablet devices and the changing roles of the faculty instructor and learners when using this device in an undergraduate business management course in a business college and a graduate course in early childhood in a college of education in a large Midwestern university. The chapter describes the classroom setting, instructor and student perspectives of the implementation, and the use of the tablet both in class and out of class as well as the barriers associated with tablet use when embedded in a higher education course.