Today, Abilene Christian University announced their plan to provide all incoming freshmen for the fall ‘08 semester with Apple iPhones or iTouches. This development makes ACU the first university in the nation to provide these converged mobile devices to its incoming class.

ACU’s executive vice president, Phil Schubert, asserts that these devices will be central to the university’s innovative strategy this fall. “We enjoy great relationships with many technological leaders such as Apple, AT&T and Amdocs,” Schubert said. “These relationships help us as we continue to be a university on the leading edge of technology, a central component of our 21st Century Vision.”

According to ACU’s chief information officer, Kevin Roberts, incoming freshmen will use their iPhones or iTouches to receive homework assignments and updates, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, navigate through campus, check account balances, and more. In fact, Roberts states that ACU has already developed a score of web applications to utilize the unique capacity of these tools for teaching, learning and community building

“We are not merely providing cutting-edge technology tools to our incoming students,” said Roberts. “We are also providing the web applications that ensure these tools will become critical to the students’ learning experience. Because 93 percent of ACU students bring their own computers with them to college, we are choosing to take them to the next level by providing converged mobile devices.” Dr. Dwayne VanRheenen, ACU provost, said, “This is exciting to me, not only because we’re giving students new tools, but because we are transforming the learning environment. The extensive research that’s been done on campus in the past 10 months has prepared us to launch with freshmen this fall, and research will be ongoing as we expand the program in the future.”

As we’ve reported in the past, you can check out ACU’s vision for mobile learning at www.acu.edu/connected. This site contains the film “Connected,” a projection of the iPhone’s daily usage on campus, along with a host of other mLearning efforts and resources.