Hashtag Higher Ed

Whether you personally own a voice assistant or not, you’ve certainly heard about their growing popularity. One in six US adults (or around 39 million people) now own a voice-activated smart speaker, and 50% of all searches are projected to be voice searches by 2020. But can voice assistants work on campus? Do we need them to? In this episode of the Hashtag Higher Ed Podcast, David Hakanson, Vice President, CIO, and Chief Innovation Officer at Saint Louis University, discusses the decision to place Amazon Echo Dots at SLU’s 2,300+ residence areas, how his team implemented the deployment in just three months, how students are using these devices, and how SLU is balancing access to information with student privacy concerns.