South Dakota Board of Regents Mobile Computing Initiative

During the past year the South Dakota Board of Regents has considered an initiative to require all students to have a mobile computing device.  One of the drivers of this decision is the state’s commitment the past three year to provide financial support for the Department of Education's one-to-one laptop/tablet Classroom Connections initiative.  The Board of Regents recognizes the potential disconnect in the near future between the state’s high schools and the Regental institutions and that the institutions need to move in concert with K-12 schools.  From a practical standpoint, the system’s teacher education programs are already moving to prepare candidates who have experience in and can work in the laptop/tablet high schools.  Clearly, the system needs to establish a leadership role in this process and this role needs to play out in all of the manners through which the universities commonly provide educational services.   

             To seed this process, the Governor Rounds committed funds to the Regental System to support the development of teaching/learning environments that will fully realize the changes that are expected from the Board’s one-to-one mobile computing initiative.  It is expected that these funds will be used to initiate efforts significantly different than those supported by the Teaching with Technology program, which supported individual faculty members who elected to make use of technology most commonly to redesign a single course offered.  This current initiative is calling upon faculty to work collaboratively system-wide to rethink how the curriculum is delivered and to develop a series of plans/strategies that can guide professional development by the system and the campuses as funds are available.  This website was developed as a resource not only for those campus representatives involved with the initiative, but to also inform campus personnel of progress/status for the taskforce and its various working groups (Infrastructure, Training and Development, Integration and Pedagogy).