Talking Stick - July/August 2012 - 21

Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; storing medical students’ copious course notes at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut; or operating engineering applications for group projects at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. Higher education is also implementing this technology in residence life. Undergraduate resident assistants are coming in with digital skills that are second nature, navigating through applications on their iPhones to find the weather, download a PowerPoint presentation, and create a Twitter account within minutes. Several campuses have participated in the Apple craze by purchasing new iPods and iPads for their staff in order to increase efficiency, sustainability, and accessibility in operations. These devices have the potential to consolidate time-consuming processes and provide a higher level of service for students, but the concern is that they can also become a way for staff to play Angry Birds around the clock. In order to maintain the priceless benefits that new technology has to offer, there must be a defined plan for implementation into the work flow, training for employees unfamiliar with the technology, a code for determining what functions the device should and should not be used for, and evidence for future exploration of technology with the same device.

one problem wIth Any new technology thAt seems to offer the best And newest gAdget Is thAt there Is AlwAys the potentIAl of It beIng used for personAl use on the Job. yet thIs Is A problem thAt’s been mAnAged before In housIng operAtIons.
the right tool. The housing faculty provided an iPod to each resident assistant and professional staff member (about 200 total) to aid in daily Web-based tasks. “We don’t say, ‘We want iPads,’ and then find a way to use them,” says TJ Logan, associate director of housing administrative services; instead, they find a way to use them first. The housing staff uses the iPod to record information for everyday assignments like filling out room condition forms, sending billing invoices, and updating student records. The information is entered directly into the online database that processes these operations, eliminating the time-consuming step of filling out a paper form and then returning to the office to enter the data into the system. Ithaca College in New York also uses iPads for apartment condition forms, but they purchased only two devices, one for the assistant director of operations and one for the manager of campus facilities. Ithaca’s database management, FileMaker, has its own iPad application that gives the operations staff freedom to design how they use it. Currently, Ithaca’s application features an interactive overlay of the campus map; clicking on a specific building will show available and current rooms. Users have access to the most recent apartment condition reports and associated student information, which is typically a seven-page print document. J.J. Brice, community director of Circle Apartments, frequently uses an iPad to cut the administrative time of damage billing in half and to reference reports to resolve appeal cycles. The housing staff at the University of Texas in Austin also decided to make a leap straight to the iPad, but in mass quantity. They purchased 186 iPads for the residence staff. They decided to do this after they examined how much time residence staff spent on the Internet to complete assigned tasks. Now the residence staff can complete all Web-based tasks with the iPads, including room condition forms, maintenance request forms, email communication, incident reports, note taking, and PDF storage. One of the student-driven goals of using the iPads was to make these assignments mobile and accessible during field assignments. “It is mobility and easy access, absolutely. We were asking them to do more with technology, but not providing them the technology,” says Hemlata Jhaveri, associate director of housing and residence life at Texas. RAs can now bring their iPads along during nightly room checks, work orders, and room condition assessments, efficiently completing any “paperwork” on the spot. “Our biggest switch was the room condition forms. We have 7,500
July + August 2012

implementation plan anD tasks
Before implementing the iPod Touch into daily tasks for residence life, the University of Florida in Gainesville streamlined system operations, considered ways to improve operations, and then searched for

Talking Stick - July/August 2012

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