Just what Gen Alpha students will expect from campus technology, of course, remains to be seen. Kevin Dowlin, assistant vice chancellor for technology, innovation and learning environments at Rutgers University–Newark, says his twin daughters, born in 2009, “are almost Alpha; they’re on the cusp. And it’s really interesting right now because the state of New Jersey has banned cellphones in schools, which I have mixed emotions about.”
New Jersey is not alone: New York implemented a similar ban in 2025, joining more than 35 other states that have enacted some level of restrictions for cellphones in school, whether through so-called “bell-to-bell” bans that completely forbid their use through an entire school day or some other level of restriction. The development may end up shifting Gen Alpha’s preferences for always-on capabilities in an educational setting, but only time will tell.
Digital Fluency Ensures Students Can Make the Most of Tech
“I do think there’s a misunderstanding about them being digital natives,” Dowlin says. “They use technology, and they move through technology all the time, but they don’t understand it at all; they don’t understand how things work.”
To that end, Rutgers–Newark’s digital fluency project seeks to teach students about the technologies that are so ubiquitous in their day-to-day lives, “not so they become technologists,” Dowlin notes, “but we believe that everyone has to be comfortable and understand technology. This is extremely important right now because we’re also shifting into a moment when we have huge questions about integrity in our teaching and learning spaces, and AI is such an enabler for everyone.”
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The work Rutgers–Newark has undertaken to advance students’ familiarity with technology, and understanding about what makes it possible, may be just as poignant for Gen Alpha students who arrive on campus with less experience in using devices like their phones as an essential component for learning.
And, yes, the cloud will be necessary to keep it all running smoothly as more students command more power, not only to stay connected but also to experiment with or stand up large language models and other nascent solutions that will undoubtedly be a part of day-to-day learning environments over the next five to 10 years, when most Gen Alphas start arriving on campus.
What Will Gen Alpha Need to Succeed?
“As we get opportunities to visit institutions, we see a lot of changes they’re going through as they try to adapt to basically providing a lot of different learning modalities to students,” says Jay Lyons, an education product manager at Logitech. “We’ve also seen a lot of research, and there’s a lot of great data points out there; for example, 1 in 3 students, and 1 in 4 faculty members, would consider leaving an institution if the technology isn’t working.”
Gen Alpha’s expectations will most likely be even higher, Lyons predicts.
“Their level of patience for hardware or technology that’s not working is even less, and that’s going to start to inform shifts in how higher ed institutions roll out how we will go to class, how we will enable hybrid. Are we going to do in-class only? Remote only? Those things are still being vetted, but Gen Alpha will definitely prompt changes. How many more tools are going to come out in the next five to 10 years that will be so far advanced from what we have today, that will impact their process of learning?”
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One way colleges and universities have started to prepare from a computing standpoint is through establishing sandboxes, Lyons says, and testing new methods and tools within a closed environment as opposed to simply allowing new tech and tools to proliferate — almost blindly – campuswide.
Such testing can prevent tool or cloud sprawl because testing solutions or tools first, before allowing faculty or students to simply adopt anything they like, cuts down on management complexities, for starters.
“If you have too many different versions of things — and I have been at institutions where they kind of show off, ‘Look, we have all of these different messaging platforms, or ways that students can connect with faculty more regularly,’ — that burden seems to take a bigger toll on faculty members and the IT teams,” Lyons says.
Institutions that have so far successfully balanced and enabled students’ and faculty’s communication and connectivity needs — and met their expectations — have thoroughly tested the hardware and software platforms they’re using today, along with learning management systems and other cloud-based tools, before giving them their blessing, Lyons says.
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“I think current and future generations of students expect that things should be easy,” Dowlin says. “Ordering food is easy: I pick up my phone, I order food, it shows up in 35 minutes, right? Nothing at institutions, especially institutions of our scale, is easy for students. We spend a lot of effort trying to guide them through the processes, but we really need to focus on engineering the processes.”
What’s Standing in the Way?
Beyond novel cloud use cases that will propel Gen Alpha connectivity, Dowlin hopes that pedagogical shifts will also happen, to ensure this upcoming cohort will remain engaged.
“You have to be really intentional about using those tools,” he says. “We’re still predominantly a commuter campus, so I’ve always felt the hybrid strategy would be a great one. It’s becoming kind of congruent — the tools that you use to teach online and hybrid and in-person are all the same, right? So from a technology standpoint, it’s not really about teaching online, or hybrid or in-person. It’s how you blend those to get the best experience.”
