BRING-YOUR-OWN-DEVICE (BYOD): ISSUES AND ...

BRING-YOUR-OWN-DEVICE (BYOD): ISSUES AND IMPLEMENTATION IN LOCAL COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES IN THE PHILIPPINES Teodoro A. Macaraeg Jr. University of Caloocan City, Philippines

Abstract Bring your own device, or BYOD is the by-product of the downpour of mobile devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc.) in the local market. According to Gartner (2013), many employers may impose a mandatory BYOD policy for their staffs by the year 2017. This is not far a reality for higher educational institutions (HEIs). With this in our future, HEI administrators must react dynamically. School Administrators must anticipate the pros and cons of implementing BYOD policy in their schools. This paper tries to determine the issues of integrating BYOD in the classroom and operation of the school specifically on locally funded colleges and universities or LCU in the Philippines. This research evaluates available literatures and existing guidelines on BYOD of more than ten (10) local colleges and universities in the Philippines. The researcher also conducts interviews and implement questionnaires to administrators, IT managers/staff, professors and students from LCU. BYOD trend, if miscalculated and improperly implemented may posed some problems with the actual and maybe future operation of the school concerned. In order not to hamper the operation and reap the positive effect of existing IT trend like BYOD, LCUs must be vigilant and employ necessary adjustments in the internal administration of the school. The output of this paper is a possible guideline for schools to follow in order to implement a successful BYOD policy in the near future. Key Words: BYOD, HEI, laptop, e-learning, LCU

Introduction Local Colleges and Universities (LCUs) Local Colleges and Universities (LCUs) in the Philippines are community schools being run by local government units (LGUs). They are created trough local ordinances through the Local Assemblies. These schools are primarily created to provide value public tertiary education, especially to the poor and disadvantaged youth (Wikipedia.com, 2013). LGUs are basically the sole entity funding the entire operation of the LCUs (CHED, 2006). Taking this into consideration, most LCUs are not sufficiently funded which resulted into multitude of problems – lack of facilities (classrooms, laboratories, gymnasium, audio-visual rooms, and other ancillaries), faculty members and other necessities of a decent institute of higher especially those from the rural areas.

Digital divide is in a way still holds true in some of the LCUs. Some of them do not have internet connection and state of the art computer laboratories (Tan, 2011). Still, some of them have only a handful of computer and a home-category speed internet connection. This is a hindrance for students especially with advanced background and are technology-enabled, those who have personal gadgets like laptops, smartphones, tablets and phablets (phone+tablets).

BYOD Bring your own device, or BYOD, is one of the fastest growing trends in information technology (CTOLabs.com, 2012). Many organizations including schools are considering allowing personally-owned mobile devices like laptops, smartphones, tablets and phablets (phone+tablets) to access its private network, thus accessing its corporate applications and data. Mayes (2013) said people like the freedom they get using in their own personal gadgets and be able to access seamlessly (researchandmarkets.com, 2012) practically anything, anytime, anywhere, and they want to be able to do the same thing with their work. Many organizations are considering personally-owned mobile devices for business apps. Their goal is to drive employee satisfaction and productivity through the use of new technologies, while simultaneously reducing mobile expenses (MobileIron, 2011). In a school setup, BYOD concept supports delivery of elearning systems and other school productivity tools.

Figure 1. Basic BYOD Architecture Figure 1 shows a basic BYOD architecture. Mobile devices connect to the network via wireless connectivity (Capron and Johnson, 2002). The device and specific user are then

authenticated by the network’s controller and device management systems. Once authenticated, the user can access the public internet or applications residing at the server of the company, depending on the access accounts or privilege of the user. . The IT department is responsible for the maintaining the network and enable whole range of services like application control, device control and management, network reliability, security, performance and vast number of applications (Miller, 2013). IT may also have the responsibility to educate the users, like secure ways of sharing the network resources, issues of confidentiality, personal information security, and protection from electronic spam (Rriabov and Higgs, 2010).

Figure 2. A School BYOD Setup BYOD is also the uprising trend in schools (Noor & Hassan, 2013). BYOD setup for a school is quite straightforward (Figure 2). School staffs, faculty and students connect to the school’s wireless network using their mobile devices to access internet and other application. In a study made by Tanti and Cameron (2012), more than 80% of the respondents from a university owned mobile devices like laptop and ipad and still 86% of the respondents use them to connect to the school network for mobile internet connection and educational purposes like research and access learning resources and other educational tools.). The network must be very properly designed, so that all the users are allocated reasonable bandwidth (Noor & Hassan, 2013). BYOD is basically the byproduct of I.T. consumerization. According to Kerravala (2012) the further shift to consumerization of IT will be driven by the following trends:     

Cloud computing: location-independent of application and other IT resources availability. Device evolution: Mobile devices evolved faster, having high quality multimedia interfaces for more customer satisfactions. Wireless advancements: Lower in price, high performance and commercial availability of Wi-Fi and 4G cellular services. Evolution of virtualization: Virtualization has the power to decouple an IT resource from the physical platform it resides on. Worker mobility: The number of mobile workers has steadily increased year-over-year.

The use of computers, networks, and internet has successfully enabled educational institutions to provide their faculty and students with various online educational services and resources. Recent developments in e-learning and mobile technology, further possibilities are emerging to provide such services through mobile (El-Sofany, 2013).

Discussion The study was introduced to more than ten (10) local colleges and universities in the Philippines. Majority of the respondents is from the age bracket 16-20 years old (82.6%) and are currently enrolled students (89.3%). Though the subjects of this study are LCUs, it has been noted that 96.5% of the respondents are updated in terms of technology usage and owned at least one mobile device. Around 92.7% of this brings their mobile devices in the school everyday (76%) though not all schools allows (7.4%), some have limitations in their school policies (27.4%) and 41.2% noted that there is no clear policies regarding BYOD. But with policies on hand, 44.6% said that their school has stricter policies concerning the bringing-in of personally owned device. Some 45.1% of the respondents indicate that there are trainings being conducted by the school regarding BYOD. These trainings, as stated by 76.1% of the respondents, are in consonants for having better school operation and conduct of everyday classes. Still noted are those respondents that are not aware of the BYOD trends (30.4%) and 30.8% of them are really not concerned about it, but still 44.1% of the respondent said that their school do implement a policy regarding BYOD. For the student respondents, 65.3% used their devices for classroom and other school related works while a massive 83.3% of school employees who bring their own device used them for work related chores. Respondents (19.4%) noted that bringing in personally owned devices will bring disaster in the operation of the schools and the conduct of classes. Specifically, around 24% agrees that implementing BYOD is an additional data security threat for the school with this devices constantly connecting to the school’s network infrastructure Issues in Implementing BYOD Respondents listed some noted issues in the implementation of BYOD in their respective schools.  Safety of the device from theft and from being hacked.  Technical capability of the IT department to implement BYOD  Digital divide – the incapacity of all students to buy mobile device  Institutional budgetary constraints to support IT infrastructure upgrades  Network security threat  Lack of trainings in the proper usage of applications and advance devices  Defective or no school policies regarding BYOD  Cultural difficulty to absorb technological change

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Will of the top management to implement BYOD

But despite this issues collected from the respondents, possible solutions were also presented:  Technological awareness and willingness of school administrators  Additional budget for the upgrading of school’s I.T. infrastructure  Constant I.T. training specifically on mobile technology  Consolidated institutional policies integrating the concept on BYOD

Conclusion In this research, the status and issues in the implementation LCUs regarding BYOD trends are discussed. It is noted that though LCUs basically lacks funding and majority of students comes from the poor families, they are technically inclined with current trends in Information Technology. This posed some problems with the actual and maybe future operation of the school concerned. In order not to hamper the operation and reap the positive effect of existing IT trend like BYOD, LCUs must be vigilant and employ necessary adjustments in the internal administration of the school. Recommendation Embracing a BYOD trend and implementing it is an enormous task on the part of the administrators. The scope of this study was limited on the recognition whether community colleges and universities in the Philippines are aware of the BYOD trend that is engulfing the enterprise, schools and other institutions. It would be worthwhile if LCU collaborate with other educational institutions especially ICT companies with experiences and expertise in the successful implementations of BYOD policies. In this regards, schools policies and manual will be updated to cope up with this BYOD trend. References 1. Capron, H. L. & Johnson, J. A. (2003). Computers Tools for an Information Age, 7th Edition, published by Pearson Education (Asia) PTE Ltd, Inc., page 7-209. 2. CHED-Commission on Higher Education (2006). CHED Memorandum Order – CMO 32 Series of 2006. Retrieved from www.ched.gov.ph/chedwww/index.php/eng/.../ C O .pdf. 3. CTOlabs.com (2012). White Paper: The Current State of BYOD. Retrieved from http://ctolabs.com/currentstateofbyod. 4. El-Sofany, H.F. (2013). Improving Educational Outcomes by Providing Educational Services through Mobile Technology. Retrieved from http://online-journals.org/ijim/article/view/2287.

5. Kerravala, Z. (2012). BYOD: Focus on User Experience, Not the Device. Retrieved from http://www.avaya.com/usa/resource/assets/premiumcontent/boyd-zeus_kerravala.pdf. 6. Mayes, J. (2013). Securing Mobile Devices aka BYOD, a Transcript. Retrieved from www.cert.org/podcast/transcripts/20130326mayes-transcript.pdf. 7.

obileIron ( 11). Building “Bring-Your-Own-Device” (BYOD) trategies. Retrieved from http://www.webtorials.com/main/resource/papers/mobileiron/paper1/byod_part_1.pdf.

8. Noor, M.M. & Hassan, W.H. (2013). Wireless Networks: Developments, Threats and Countermeasures Communication System and Network. Proceedings from the International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(1): 119-134. 9. Researchandmarkets.com (2012). Brochure on Bring Your Own Device (BYOD): Market Analysis and Forecasts. Retrieved from http://www. /reports/2137055. 10. Riabov, V.V. & Higgs, B.J. (2010). Running a computer security course: challenges, tools and projects. Proceeding from the InSight: Rivier Academic Journal, Vol 6, # 1. 11. Tan, K. J. (2011). GMA News: CHED: Degree programs of some local colleges have no permits. Retrieved from http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/214218/news/nation/ cheddegree-programs-of-some-local-colleges-have-no-permits. 13. Tanti, M. & Cameron, L. (2012). One-to-one Computing: Considerations and issues for the Higher Education Sector. Retrieved from http://www.samsung.com/us/it_solutions/ innovation-center/downloads/education/white_papers/ One-to-One_2.0_-_Handbook.pdf. 14. Wikipedia (2013). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALCU.