This paper deals with the use of personal technologies in decentralized university education. Decentralized education, delivered to off-campus students located in the same geographical area, is a hybrid genre combining features of both on-campus and distance education. The paper reports two studies. The first study focused on communication patterns among students in a regular decentralized education setting. It was shown that: there are obstacles preventing the students from developing communities of practice, and some of the obstacles are likely to be eliminated with personal technologies helping the students to get access to various resources and to communicate with each other. The second study included providing a student group with a set of PDAs and analyzing the impact of the technology on students' learning and communication patterns. The prospects for using personal technologies in decentralized education are discussed. (Contains 26 references.) (Author)