Hello,

I'm considering doing some research into the use of iPads by academics and students at University and evaluating their effectiveness in the current teaching structure. For example, is the iPad suitable for students to view our University's teaching software, use as a textbook reader, create assignments, etc...

Rather than asking the participants to keep a journal/diary of their use, are there any tools out there to log what features of the iPad that they are using that can then be either uploaded by the user or downloaded by me at a later date? I don't really want a keylogger as I'm not interested in the specifics of what they get up to, just the general applications they use, how often and for how long, etc...

I'd love any suggestions

Thanks,
zedp

P.S. I don't have an iPad myself yet, so I'm just beginning my preliminary research.

The iPad only allows a limited number of background task types. What you want to do is not supported. It might be possible with a jailbroke iPad, but I doubt you're going to convince the entire campus to do that.

For your websites, it should be possible to create some kind of tracking that will recognize and record the types of devices that visit. Talk to your web managers.