How Today's Technology is Shaping Tomorrow's Students

We believe the future of technology on campus is one where all students have access to all available tools and resources while integrating the school's social community. As a team of former student leaders and education researchers, we are devoted to making this future a reality by providing an engaging mobile experience to students. We strive to reduce the complexity of today's campus life into a coherent user experience!

In order to achieve this mission, we all need to analyze the challenges students face today (e.g. complexity, stress, expectations, motivation, engagement) and seek to alleviate them for future generations. Today's students grew up in a society like no other before them. Here's more insight on the subject, project of the Pew Research Center.

Read the SlideShare after the jump!

3 Main Reasons Students Pursue A Higher Education Degree

This post celebrates graduation with some thoughts on the top three most highly discussed reasons for why we pursue a higher education degree (to all the recent graduates, congratulations!)

Reason 1: Money (increase in salary)

The most popularly discussed reason for attending higher education is the reported increase in salary upon graduation. In a study done by Astin (1985), it was found that 72% of U.S. college freshman, across the nation, chose 'increased earning power' to be the main benefit of a higher education degree, while 83% reported the main reason for attending college was to 'get a better job' (as cited by Becker, 1992), which past research has also found to be the case (Leslie, et al., 1997; Tannen, 1978).

You're Not That Busy

With the closing of the school year and the approach of warm weather (and hopefully some relaxation time), I would like to take this opportunity to make an argument for the reconceptualization of our sense of ‘busyness’, as well as pursue the idea of the importance of daydreaming and idle thought. Busyness is a complex (and sometimes circular), multi-faceted issue, requiring multiple discussion points and perhaps a lengthier post. Please bear with me as I take on this rant.  :)

The Impressive Mobile Lives of College Students

The world was completely flipped on its head on a sunny afternoon June 29th, 2007. The introduction of the 1st generation iPhone by Apple sparked a mobile revolution that would change human behavior forever. With the official announcement of the mobile era that day, all of us have been witness to incredible changes in habits and no one has been safe from it - anywhere from 17-month old babies to older crowds. According to multiple reports, there will be 5.6 billions of smartphones in circulation by 2019!

The emergence of smartphones has changed the behavior of 18-24 year-olds the most. This segment is well represented in the American student population. Wondering how much the mobile era has affected the student population? Here's an infographic outlining some pretty impressive stats.

For example:

- 60% of college students use their smartphones to meet with each other.

- 75% of college students use their smartphones at idle times during work or school breaks.

- 81% of college students use their smartphones most often for communicating with fellow students.

How to the Use Goal-as-Journey Concept to Boost Student Engagement

This post is based off an interesting recent article by Landau, Oyserman, Keefer, and Smith (2014) that looks at how journey-based metaphors can help individuals connect their image of their current self with their future self. The current self is essentially who and where we are at this moment, while the future self is who we want to be, including any particular goal we are trying to reach. The more connected we are with our sense of selves, the more likely certain outcomes such as student engagement and academic success are obtained. This article describes a series of studies that were conducted to explore how framing a person's identity metaphorically, as a destination on a journey, leads them to feel more connected to their identities, while also engaging in those actions necessary to attain it. Don't worry, these ideas are better explained in the paragraphs to follow!

3 Major Outcomes of Student Disengagement

The Contributors to, and Outcomes of, Student Disengagement

******STUDENT ENGAGEMENT SURVEY!*****

I have to take this opportunity to plug a study we are running here at OOHLALA that measures student engagement! If you are currently a student, please click on the link below before May 1, 2014, and take our survey. Participants who complete it will be entered in a lottery to potentially win an iPad Mini or a Starbucks gift card!

www.surveymonkey.com/s/Z6QJN53

We've all been disengaged at some point or another in either our job, our schooling, a relationship, you name it. What is the result of being disengaged? Usually this means we stop caring. We don't try. Sometimes, we give up.

A student who is disengaged has a low sense of belonging to their school, which can lead to a number of unsavory results, like dropping out. It turns out that alienation and stress play an important role in this relationship as well. How so? Let's look into these constructs in more detail to see how they can lead to disengagement and student dropout.

What is Student Engagement?

By: Tara Tressel

Defining student engagement might seem like a trivial task. How hard could it be, right? A student that is engaged is a student that cares about their learning. Done.

The truth, though, is that student engagement is quite a complex concept; one that has grown to envelop many varying factors that have different bearings on how we deal with this term. Such factors  include: socioeconomic status, student-teacher relationship, the structure and culture of the institution, and the motivations of the student5. And, unfortunately, it is also a concept that is in danger of becoming an empty catch phrase or slogan due to the broad, generalized use and measurement of the term­1. Inspired by an article­1 that exhorts stepping outside of the typical perspectives of student engagement, I will use this post to clarify what, in a practical sense, student engagement actually means and how we need to think about it.