Regis College Named Apple Distinguished School

Regis College is pleased to announce that is has been recognized as an Apple Distinguished School for 2014-2016 for going all iPad® and implementing digital pedagogy.

“I am thrilled that Regis is so recognized,” said Regis College president Antoinette M. Hays, PhD, RN, “and credit the innovative faculty and staff who themselves took this leap into mobile technology with us almost three years ago and mentored the next group of faculty engaging students in classrooms without walls and across the world.”

The Apple Distinguished School designation is reserved for institution-wide programs that meet criteria for innovation, leadership, and educational excellence, and demonstrate a clear vision of exemplary learning environments.

“We’ve always had a learning environment with a personal touch,” said Regis CIO Marla Botelho, “but becoming an all iPad institution meant technologically redesigning how we do that, beginning with wireless review and installation, faculty innovator proposals and professional development, distribution of iPads to all faculty and students, and weekly workshops supporting digital pedagogy, such as digital storytelling and the flipped classroom.”

“At Regis, we are always asking ourselves how to create the best learning environment to prepare our students for the future,” said Vice President, Academic Affairs, Malcolm Asadoorian, PhD, “and acknowledgement as an Apple Distinguished School recognizes the more than two years of collaboration and innovation by Regis faculty, staff, and students in establishing our 1:1 mobile technology initiative. It is also an opportunity for our community to reflect on the educational impacts of mobile computing,” he continued, “and the teaching methods that best utilize these tools while sharing what we’ve learned with other institutions moving in this direction.”

“Two years ago we thought we were off to a wonderful start when a graduate professor of communications said she did not know why she had waited so long to use iPads in her classes,” said President Hays, “and undergrads were using them for everything, but then our graduate students in nursing began developing apps for health care and last summer faculty and staff members immersed themselves in learning how to create an iBook. My digital pedagogy project had taken wings of its own,” she continued, “and our mission to engage, serve and advance in a global community is flying on those wings.”