The 4G Campus: Purdue & Verizon School Students With LTE

“How do you make a better engineer? a better nurse? a better statistician?” – that’s the question Scott Ksander posed when asked what Purdue University’s 4G Campus would mean for their students. In partnership with Verizon Wireless, who today announced details of their 4G launch, have created a fully connected 4G campus. From the dorms, to the classrooms, and through the quads in between.

The average person may hear “The 4G Campus” and think, “Whipdy Doo… fast internet,” but not Scott Ksander. The Purdue Alumn has worked in data networking at his Alma Mater for 25 years, and along with a dedicated 12+ person team and executive oversight, has been working on this initiative for nearly 2 years.

Sure, 4G means faster internet, but Mr. Ksander argues it’s just a foundation for answering the rhetorical questions he previously posed.

“Do you remember when technology jumped from 56k modems to Cable Internet?”

Unfortunately I did. I remembered hearing those awful crackling robot sounds when my modem dialed up. I remembered waiting 30 seconds for a single image to load. I remembered loading up videos and… oh wait, nevermind, I don’t remember loading up videos.

Mr. Ksander’s illustration of the migration from 56k to Cable was the perfect example of why he feels the 4G Campus will transform the way students learn. And ultimately, it will create better engineers, better nurses, better statisticians, and so on and so forth.  The 4G Campus can’t be complacent with great data speeds, but instead requires Purdue to leverage this newfound asset to improve the educational experience of their students.

And that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Take for a example an app called Signals that Purdue has prototyped and tested. It essentially “tracks” their location and their interaction with courses through Blackboard, and looks for signals as to how they can improve and earn better grades based on what they are or aren’t doing.

Invasion of privacy? The paranoia with knowing where you are will never cease, but Signals doesn’t care to share location information with anyone. Not professors, classmates, parents or anyone else. Instead, it uses that information to make suggestions based on patterns. However, both professors and students have access to course-related information.

“You’re 5 weeks into the course and haven’t been in the building where your course meets yet? Yeah, you’re probably not doing the best job,” joked Mr. Ksander, while also making a good point, “Maybe you haven’t read the syllabus, haven’t visited the website recently, or haven’t done other suggested things that could improve your grades.”

Carry around “Signals” on the 4G Campus and you don’t need to do much for it to work. It learns what you’re doing and makes recommendations on how to improve. I think of it as a tool that learns what you’re doing and tries to help you create better study habits by offering personalized recommendations.

Purdue tested Signals and with great results: students who participated in the experiment earned (on average) a full letter grade above students who did not participate. If nothing else, Signals illustrates how Purdue is approaching education from a different angle, trying to find new and innovative ways to support their overall goals with technology. With 4G come opportunities to create entirely new experiences, much like going from slow loading images on 56k to streaming YouTube video on Cable Modem. But Verizon 4G is the next generation of technological growth and perhaps a bigger boom than even those previous.

Let’s go all CSI on you for a minute. In an episode of “Dirty Jobs”, Purdue University’s Forensic Entymology Team’s study of insects on decomposing pig carcasses was featured in an episode called “Bug Detective”.

“Insects are important to murder investigations because they are a natural part of decomposition of animals, including humans,” said entomology professor Ralph Williams. The crime scenes are artificial but realistically disgusting with decomposing pigs in trashcans and the whole nine yards. So how does Purdue and Verizon’s 4G Campus make this learning experience a better learning experience?

With Verizon’s 4G Network, which is 10x quicker than their 3G network, Purdue could set up a mobile lab at the virtual crime scene. Instead of  collecting data and going back to the classroom to do “work” and then home to do “homework”, 4G connectivity would allow them to do various imagery and tests, analyze it on-site, and compile and transmit tons of data in real-time and in a mobile environment. In the case of this Criminology course, 4G will completely transform and enrich the entire learning process.

Signals and the mobile crime scene are just two examples of how Purdue is trying to leverage their 4G campus. The University is currently gearing up a development group to make small production apps and testing the deployment of different ideas to extend the learning experience.

When talking about businesses we often hear how people are their biggest asset. For Purdue, people are the product they supply. And for Mr. Ksander and his team, they’re right in the middle, trying to learn about the people coming in so they can mold the best students by the time they’re on the way out. And in that middle ground, technology is one of the largest tools Purdue has at its disposal.

I’m confident that Purdue’s 4G Campus will be a huge success because simply put, they’re asking the right questions. It isn’t about doing things “by the book” or clinging to “the traditional way”. It also isn’t about tossing up the latest technology and telling students to get up and at it. It’s about facilitating a deeper and better experience with all the technology available- in this case, Verizon’s hot off the presses 4G LTE network (but keep in mind Purdue/Verizon have been working on this partnership for 2 years!). Because 4G technology is so new, the possibilities are endless and the best ideas haven’t even been thought up – but watch out, because it sounds like the team at Purdue is brainstorming.

Remember those questions, “”How do you make a better engineer? a better nurse? a better statistician?” Purdue University is well on their way. The manner my conversation with Mr. Ksander ended may have had the most profound effect on my opinion of their partnership with Verizon and the 4G Campus:

“A lot of times in higher ed we think the job is to teach the students. In this particular area I think my job is to learn from the students. Grade school kids, high school kids, come and tell me what you’re doing, what’s the coolest thing you’ve done in the last 90 days, who are your BFFs and how do you stay in touch,” and he continued, but it’s the approach that amazed me. He can’t leverage technology for his college students if he doesn’t understand how they currently use it and how they want to use it in the future.

Technology is an enabler and Purdue’s partnership with Verizon Wireless will provide tremendous opportunities for students and faculty alike. But the deeper question of “what are we enabling?” and “Why?” are also at the heart of the matter. Having 4G technology is great, but what are the greatest things we’ll accomplish with this newfound speed? That has yet to be determined, but I’m glad the folks at Purdue are helping us figure it out.