When I use a checkbox it will update my view model no problem, but when I turn on data-role="switch" it no longer updates. Is there something I need to do differently.
When you add a data-role="switch" attribute to the input kendo mobile application will initialize a widget. In order to monitor its state you can hook up to to the change event of the component via data-change attribute.
This is false. Refer to this post for the accurate way of initializing a Switch widget https://www.telerik.com/forums/use-the-mobile-switch-within-regular-mvvm-framework