GEC NEWS WIREThe mobile student owns three or more connected devices, prefers a Wi-Fi connection and working outside normal school hours
Many students would prefer to give up coffee, TV and eating out before their precious smartphones, according to a report called ‘Building the #GenMobile Campus’, from Aruba Networks. Nearly a fifth of these students (19%) spend more than five hours online daily, preferring Wi-Fi connections (73%) over any othersuch as 3G or 4G.
The study, which questioned nearly 1500 students across the globe including UAE and Saudi Arabia, the two biggest IT markets in the Middle East, showed that nearly two thirds (65%) of today’s students own three or more connected devices; spend over five hours a day on their mobiles, often use more than five apps at any one time; and are regularly rejecting traditional lecture-hall based learning for digital working across campus – whenever it works for them. About half even said they preferred to work ‘outside of normal school hours’, stating they worked more efficiently.
“In any university or college, being connected and mobile is now an essential part of life – both for work and play. It’s a central behaviour of the generation we’re calling #GenMobile,” says Ammar Enaya, General Manager of Aruba Networks Middle East.
The new Aruba Mobility Academy provides students with the fundamentals required to build, maintain and advance wireless LAN networks, in unique, for credit semester-long courses that can be directly integrated into higher education programmes. In the Middle East, it is currently available at Princess Sumaya University in Jordan. Aruba is in collaboration discussions with several other prestigious regional universities.
