Connected Students Would Prefer to Give up Coffee and TV: Survey

Many students would prefer to give up coffee, TV and eating out before their precious smartphones, according to a report called ‘Building the #GenMobile Campus’, from Aruba Networks. Nearly a fifth of these students (19%) spend more than five hours online daily, preferring Wi-Fi connections (73%) over any other such as 3G or 4G.  

The study, which questioned nearly 1500 students across the globe including UAE and Saudi Arabia, the two biggest IT markets in the Middle East, showed that nearly two thirds (65%) of today’s students own three or more connected devices; spend over five hours a day on their mobiles, often use more than five apps at any one time; and are regularly rejecting traditional lecture-hall based learning for digital working across campus - whenever it works for them. About half even said they preferred to work ‘outside of normal school hours’, stating they worked more efficiently.

Even the lecture hall is going digital with 44% using mobile devices to take notes in lectures, while seven in ten (71%) are using these devices to access college emails.

Aruba Networks says universities today are realizing the advantages of using mobile technologies, for both students and lecturers, understanding that they allow for a diversification and evolvement in - often historic - teaching methods, which in turn offers flexibility to accommodate different styles of student learning.

“In any university or college, being connected and mobile is now an essential part of life - both for work and play. It’s a central behaviour of the generation we’re calling #GenMobile,” says Ammar Enaya, General Manager of Aruba Networks Middle East.

“However, all this new tech does have a knock on effect on the IT department and it’s really time for universities to prepare themselves for the #GenMobile Campus. The reality is IT pros in universities are under more pressure than ever to determine the best way to manage the security and reliability of all these devices entering the network and ensure that the bandwidth they’re enabling is up to speed, all while keeping costs down.”

To help IT pros in the Education sector, Aruba has developed some advice to universities on how to deal with this new generation of digitally native, super-connected student.