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hat you hold in your hands is the crystallized product of a vision. It represents the dedicated labor and thinking of hundreds of people at Abilene Christian University – faculty, students, technologists and administrators – all struggling and sacrificing to give that vision shape, dimension and substance. The smooth polish of this document belies the exertion behind it: sleepless nights and early mornings, vigorous debates and giddy invention sessions, scores of white-board markers, hundreds of meetings, thousands of pages, crates of caffeinated soda. The sheer output of energy over this past year has been staggering. And for what? The French writer Antoine de St. Exupéry once wrote, “As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.” We think he got it only half right. Our task has, indeed, been to foresee the future, to imagine what learning will look like a decade from now – and a decade after that … to dream for students who are not yet born and to create for those who are already here. When we say we’re working to fashion the university of the future, we mean just that – not only for ACU, but for universities everywhere. We’ve endeavored to imagine a world where classes become untethered from the stony isolation of four walls, where information is accessible in new contexts and situations, where learning becomes truly mobile, permeating our students’ lives. And having labored to foresee this, we’ve also striven to enable it, committing our time, our passion, our abilities, and our hopes to manifesting our vision.
We’ve had some amazing successes in the year since we launched our mobile-learning initiative: international accolades, speaking appointments around the world, conferences attended by representatives from the most prestigious schools. People have seen our vision for the future and responded enthusiastically. From the first showing of our Connected video to the most recent reports from our mobile-learning researchers, the world has watched our vision unfold and has commended it. Of course, all this attention from our peers has been immensely gratifying, and we’re proud of our accomplishments. But that’s not why we’re doing this. We’re pursuing the future of learning because we know our students will live and work in a world that doesn’t yet exist – a world whose challenges and possibilities are only now beginning to coalesce. If we can offer them the advantages not only of seeing the new world these changes will create, but also of pioneering that world for those who will come after us, then we’ve done something truly valuable. This is at the heart of ACU’s mission to educate students for Christian service and leadership throughout the world. In the following pages, you’ll discover the story of our efforts to enable the future of education. You’ll read testimonials from students and faculty about the ways mobility is changing their lives and the way they learn and work. You’ll read about the activities of scholars, researchers and technologists as they labor together to understand what’s next, and you’ll find the account of lessons we’ve learned. We hope this will be enlightening. More importantly, we hope it will be inspiring, helping you, too, to catch the vision as we work to be exceptional, innovative and make a real difference. n 3