BYOD strategies in higher education: current knowledge, students’ perspectives, and challenges

Over the last decade, the use of mobile computing devices has become an integral part of virtually every aspect of our personal and professional life, and education is no exception to this paradigm. The expression "Bring Your Own Device" ('BYOD') has gained widespread use and is currently defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "the policy or practice of allowing employees, customers, etc., to connect to an organization's network using their own smartphones, computers, etc. While there are governmental guidelines regulating the use of BYOD strategies in work environments in the public sector, a consistent framework has yet to be put in place to standardise their use as education tools in schools and universities. A plethora of arguments has been raised both in favour of and against the educational use of electronic devices in what appears to be a yet unsolved debate. This paper seeks to focus on the critical evaluation of the current knowledge on the implementation of BYOD strategies in higher education (HE), highlighting potential caveats arising from their use with specific regards to the issue of digital divide within the learning group. The first part of the paper explores and discusses relevant recent literature and offers some key views on the effectiveness and limitations of the use of BYOD strategies. The second part outlines the results of a recent case study giving a practical account of the implementation of BYOD-based formative assessment in higher education.