BE A MOBILE LEADER 5 Winning Strategies for Creating a University Mobile App Everyone Will Love (and Can’t Live Without)

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The mobile-born generation is here. Today’s students have been born and raised on mobile devices. In 2013, three out of every four college-bound high school students used mobile devices and 68% researched college web sites via mobile. 43% went online almost exclusively using mobile devices.1

As smartphone adoption increases, so does the expectation for apps and user experiences. Users overwhelmingly prefer native apps to the mobile web. Recent studies show that smartphone users spend 87% of their time using native apps versus just 13% in mobile web browsers and that proportion has been growing for the past several years.2 In addition, a 2012 EDUCAUSE survey showed that the majority of college students prefer native apps to the mobile web for academic-related tasks.3

Yet, the compounding effect of BYOD, with many students and staff bringing more than one device, is tripling the size of the university mobile burden. Universities must now effectively support multiple users, multiple locations, and multiple apps – all from a single system.

Several universities are at the forefront of providing a comprehensive mobile experience for their students.

This is now easier than ever with new tools that allow non-developers to create new apps in hours. Some of these best practices can provide useful inspiration for creating an engaging mobile experience at your campus.

One: Give them what they want, when they want it, on any deviceIn 2014, the “Mobile Mind Shift” was defined as the “expectation that I can get what I want in my immediate context and moments of need.”4 This mindset is especially true among the mobile-born generation. Students use their mobile devices in different physical, mental, social, and behavioral contexts than they do a desktop device. They expect and need access to glance-able and actionable information. To meet this demand, mobile should not be treated as an add-on or side project but rather engineered into every information process at the institution.

1. Noel-Levitz, OmniUpdate, CollegeWeekLive, and the National Research Center for College and University Admissions. “2013 E-Expectations report: The Impact of Mobile Browsing on the College Search Process.”

2. Nielsen, “Q1 2013 Cross Platform Report.”

3. EDUCAUSE Research Bulletin, “Student Preference for Mobile App Usage,” Sept 12 2012.

4. Schadler, Bernoff & Ask, “The Mobile Mind Shift: Engineer your Business to Win in the Mobile Moment,” Forrester Research, 2014.

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Georgetown University realized that students expected to get what they wanted on any device at any time. To meet their needs, the university partnered with student affairs and student technical advisory groups to identify mobile priorities that encompassed all aspects of living, learning and working at the university. Then they worked backwards to ensure that university processes supported the shift to new mobile experiences. As a result, they have already

successfully rolled out apps for laundry, dining, transit, travel, safety, courses, athletics and admissions, and are planning future modules for mobile IDs, door access and payments.

California State University, Northridge is another leader that provides comprehensive mobile-first solutions for its community. In addition to integrating their app with PeopleSoft, Moodle, maps, transit, and police services, among other modules, they recently

rolled out a module that allows students to pay their tuition and fees directly from the CSUN mobile app.

By making mobile a part of their mindset, these universities have provided uniquely meaningful apps that allow their students and employees to interact and take action in the moment.

Two: Empower non-technical staff and students to create new appsTo roll out a complete mobile experience to an entire university, many universities have empowered non-technical staff to create and deploy new apps. In the past, this was not possible because new app creation required specialized programming skills and experience in app store submissions, creating substantial bottlenecks in IT. However, new tools today allow non-developers to customize pre-built modules and even create new apps from scratch quickly and without any coding. Customized apps using unique layouts and beautiful, modern user interfaces can be created for any special event or by any student group. For example, student affairs staff might create a special app for parents weekend or an international student group might create an app specifically geared toward the needs of foreign students.

One group of students at Harvard created a special app called Shoestring Strategies for Life @Harvard. This app, created entirely in spare time by students with no programming experience, provides valuable information for living on a budget at Harvard, such as where to buy inexpensive textbooks, ideas for free fun, how to find a campus job and even tips for personal finance. Non- technical staff at other schools have created engaging apps for admissions, special events, new student orientations and more. Some universities are even planning “hack-athons without the hacking” to challenge non-technical students to create useful new mobile apps for their university community.

Three: Create a personalized experienceOnly a few years ago, it was virtually impossible to create personalized experiences for mobile users. Each user who downloaded an app would have the same experience whether relevant or not. Specialized modules or features targeting specific groups were time-consuming and costly to develop.

Fast forward a few years and now universities have the ability to create more meaningful experiences for their users. Good mobile apps support different personas, such as prospective students, new students, parents, staff, and alumni, as well as users in different locations. Georgetown University, for instance, recently rolled out a New Student edition of their app specifically for incoming students. It allowed the students to quickly get up-to- date information related to their on-boarding experience including schedules, checklists and social media. It even engaged them and encouraged

CSUN’s app allows students to register for classes and pay their tuition and fees.

Created entirely by non-technical students, the Shoestring Strategies app provides valuable tips for living on a budget while at Harvard.

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collaboration before they arrived on campus with games and awards. An Alumni edition provides graduates with targeted news, event information and, of course, the ability to donate. At Georgetown, users can also identify their location to get information relevant to a specific campus, whether it is the main campus, law school, or a remote campus overseas. All versions share a single identity and many of the same data sources so no efforts were duplicated in the creation of the different modules.

The College of William & Mary also launched a New Student Orientation module in their main campus app that contained all of the essential information a new student needed so that they knew “what to do and where to go.” After the orientation period was over, the college replaced it with a Family Weekend module that contained useful information for families visiting the campus. The change was seamless to the end users. There was no need for additional downloads because new mobile solutions allow content to be changed in real time or one site to be dynamically replaced with another.

All this is possible today because new tools allow apps to be created without any coding. App creation responsibilities can be transferred to non-IT staff and even students, with virtually unlimited possibilities for creating personalized mobile experiences in a university setting.

Four: Create a seamless experience that integrates with many types of back-end dataToday, students expect a single unified mobile experience and are no longer patient to log on to multiple browsers. Great university apps provide numerous features that connect with many types of back-end data sources while providing a seamless experience for users. For example, a student should be able to log in once, view a class list, drill down to the professor, identify the office location, and find a map or bus route to get there, with just a few taps of the screen, and all without leaving the app.

“Must have” modules that make campus apps most useful include registrar, courses, transit, dining and maps. Other features that are often important to students include social, photos, laundry, library, athletics, campus news, admissions, and employee and student directories.

In the past, connecting and collaborating with the stakeholders for each individual data source could be a time consuming and inefficient process. Today pre-built easily-configurable modules allow universities to connect with many different learning management (LMS), student information (SIS) and other vital information systems. New apps can be up and running in weeks.

The University of Arizona has built a comprehensive app that allows a student to seamlessly merge all aspects of their academic, extracurricular and social life at the university. The most important feature to the student body was the ability to register for courses via mobile

Users have the ability to select different campuses or editions in Georgetown’s app.

William & Mary’s app for Family Weekend can be updated or replaced in real time.

All the data in Arizona’s app is linked for a seamless user experience. Users can choose a course and drill down to location or other information.

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device. Arizona took advantage of pre-built modules that allowed them to integrate with Oracle’s PeopleSoft in weeks. In addition, other modules such as maps, transit, class schedules, athletics, dining, meal plans, campus health, email and news, integrate with other back-end data sources for a unified experience. Arizona even included beautiful walking tours, created by personnel with no technical skills, that highlight the many great attractions at the school. The completed app was so successful that on the first day of student registration in 2014, the Arizona app had more than one million hits.

Five: Provide practical learning experiences for studentsSome universities at the forefront of the mobile revolution have tapped into their pool of student developers to build new apps. Although programming is no longer a requirement to create an amazing mobile experience, some schools are interested in providing practical learning experiences for computer science students. Open source mobile solutions, such as the Kurogo™ mobile platform, allow a mobile campus app to be scaled up easily with new modules. These student-developed modules integrate seamlessly with the main campus app and are easy to support, even when the student developer graduates.

At the University of Notre Dame, the IT department realized they did not have the time to create many of the customized apps students wanted. Yet the school had a talented pool of student developers ready and willing to create these apps. Students initially developed weather and webcam apps that became extremely popular. Now paid student developers are creating the majority of new apps at Notre Dame. It is a win-win situation for the university: students gain practical work experience while

the university deploys apps that students will actually use. Most importantly, the university can redeploy its valuable IT resources elsewhere, while still maintaining control of the mobile development process. New student-developed apps using the source code framework can be easily integrated into the main campus app.

ConclusionUniversities seeking to create interactive and personalized mobile experiences for their campus communities must address mobile as a leading consideration, not as an afterthought. Today, this is easier than ever as new tools allow apps to be created in hours without any coding. Universities can get started with pre-built modules that integrate with back-end data sources, then add any module imaginable. In no time, your university can create a comprehensive mobile experience and be a mobile leader.

Notre Dame’s Weather and Webcam apps were created entirely by computer science students yet integrate seamlessly into the main Notre Dame campus app.

ABOUT MODO LABS

Modo Labs’ Kurogo Mobile Campus powers the mobile presence of a broad and growing range of institutions, from top universities to Fortune 500 companies. The platform enables organizations to quickly create powerful multi-site and multi-role apps that work seamlessly with any data source on any device. And best of all, non-technical staff can create powerful and beautiful apps that enhance the user experience and increase user engagement in ways previously only possible by hiring expensive mobile consultants and developers. Hundreds of universities and organizations in more than 30 countries use solutions from Modo Labs to deliver rich mobile websites and native apps. Modo Labs is headquartered in Cambridge, MA. Interested parties can learn more about Modo Labs at www.modolabs.com.