Mobilizing the Higher Education Experience

Colleges and universities are expected to prepare their students for life after graduation by giving them the tools and experiences they need to be productive, thought-leading citizens. Today, that means integrating the latest technology into your students’ daily lives and making use of the advancements in digital communication and social media that have taken place in the past few years. Students are more plugged in and connected than ever, and colleges should take advantage of their widespread use of mobile devices as a way to connect, interact and engage with them. If higher education institutions want to be considered at the top of their class, they need to have a mobile strategy in place.

Smartphone and tablet usage rates are only going to continue to rise, and colleges and universities should take advantage of their students’ affinity for apps. While many schools have caught onto this trend and have started building mobile apps for their students and faculty, the majority of schools are still falling behind the curve. The most advanced colleges and universities have started to go beyond the basic student and faculty apps and have even begun to build unique workflows and functionality for parents, alumni, and prospective students. Apps that are optimized for each user group will soon become an expectation, and colleges should act fast to implement a mobile strategy.

Consider what different user groups will want from their mobile applications:

• Today’s college students have grown up using technology to learn and interact, and they have high expectations for mobile applications. They want an app to check their schedule, see their grades, and access class rosters and office hour information. Additional features applauded by students are access to campus maps, a tool to find the closest buses and campus shuttles, as well as the ability to check out extracurricular and athletics schedules and the dining hall menu. To take advantage of their adoption of social media, colleges should consider integrating Twitter and Facebook feeds into their apps to help students connect with each other. Schools can also use notifications to alert students of class cancellations, weather alerts, and campus emergencies.
• Campus staff and faculty want applications that connect with their schedules and keep them up-to-date on departmental information, classroom content, as well as many of the on-campus information that students want access to.
• Parents want an app that they can use to check on their student’s tuition fees and grades, as well as campus news and account card balances. Colleges can even mobilize their parent portal so that busy moms and dads can check in with other parents right from their smartphone.
• Alumni want to use a mobile app to stay connected with their peers through social networks, track campus happenings, enable job opportunities, and donate money to their school. Colleges that don’t optimize an app for alumni that includes a way for them to donate funds are missing out on a huge opportunity to drive revenue to the school without spending resources on calling alumni or sending out direct mail.
• For prospective students who have not yet decided which school they are going to attend, mobile applications provide an augmented sense of community and can provide greater insight during a campus tour or throughout the admissions process. Colleges can integrate GPS to enable a virtual tour, include a photo gallery of campus hot spots, and keep a calendar with notifications to make sure that applicants have all of the information and important dates they need at the push of a button.

While many colleges realize the value of deploying mobile applications, not everyone knows the best way to do so. There are a few solutions on the market for colleges that want to go mobile, but not every solution offers the same product. College students expect native apps that connect to all of the data they need and have an interesting and intuitive UI. If an app doesn’t work well, give them the information they need, or look well-made, they aren’t going to waste time using it. This means that before you invest in your mobile initiatives, you need to choose a solution that will give you the most control when building your application, allows you to be responsive to the changing needs of your students and faculty, and enables you to make changes in real time.

Every college is unique and their mobile apps should reflect their individuality. You shouldn’t use a cookie-cutter application development tool to build a higher ed app. The most technologically advanced schools that are leading the way in mobility understand the need to use a mobile application development platform that provides them with the ability to plug in to all of their backend data sources, like BlackBoard and athletic schedules, while building applications for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, as well as the leading tablet devices.

One of our customers, Indiana State University, built "ISU Mobile", an app that mobilizes information their students need. Young people use their smartphones countless times throughout the day to text their friends and use various apps, and now Indiana State students have the ability to use their phones to access athletic updates, faculty and staff directories, emergency phone numbers, campus news, student alerts and a buildings guide. Because of the agility of our platform, which allows trained users to easily make updates with minimal regression testing and no code generation, they can listen to their student’s feedback on how to improve and are planning to add on additional features in time. Check out these screen shots of their app:

Building mobile apps for your current and prospective students, as well as parents and alumni, will help you take your institution into the next era of digital communication and help foster a sense of community and connectivity. To learn more about building apps for higher education learning institutions, check out our recorded webcast “Mobility on Campus” or check out an upcoming webinar to learn more about mobile application development using a platform.

 

Comments

[cell phone tracking software]

very useful sharing (Y)

[continuing education course]

I think this is such a cool idea. Incorporating cellphones to mobilizing the productivity isn't that bad.