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Why aren’t universities creating engaging mobile platforms for students?

Mehdi Maghsoodnia, Rafter — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 23:24:02 +0000

For the last three years, I have been the CEO of the education technology company, Rafter. Combined with my experience as an executive in the mobile space at Intellisync, this has provided me with some unique insights into the mobile generation gap and what colleges specifically can do to embrace mobile on campus.

Professors once saw the mobile phone as the enemy to productive learning, with students tuning out of lectures to text and call each other. But this massive invasion of smartphones and tablets also provides opportunities for new educational possibilities.

Students now have access to adaptive learning technologies, more robust in-classroom engagement, mobile checkout processes, mobile price comparisons in on-campus stores, and even peer-to-peer resource sharing. These services are collectively used by millions of students, who find them engaging and valuable resources.

Equally important are the types of educational content that students can access, the ability to leverage this content from a wide range of producers (not just traditional publishers), and the institution’s ability to support, deliver and manage that content. Surprisingly, most campuses aren’t doing this well at all.

Current mobile solutions: Are universities doing it wrong?

Universities often have some sort of mobile platform, but too many are doing it all wrong (if they’re doing anything at all). They tend to work from the front end to the back end, taking a piecemeal approach that dumps all of the existing campus information systems (school sports trackers, events boards, educational content, bookstore resources, etc.) into their own separate mobile experiences, sometimes even developing for entirely different operating systems. The result is a disaggregated online experience that’s far from engaging for students. With so many other outside resources available, if students don’t like what the university has to offer, they simply won’t use it.

It’s certainly not an easy task for a university to create a holistic, engaging online experience, and there are plenty of roadblocks. Professors are a notoriously stubborn group and getting them to adopt mobile platforms isn’t simple. Plenty of training, education and practice are necessary. It’s also not cheap. And then there’s the daunting challenge of trying to keep 18- to 21-year-olds engaged for more than a few minutes.

Ultimately, schools must understand that to build a successful online infrastructure, they need to develop an easy-to-use and captivating student experience. Students want, and will best benefit from, a single and complete experience for all the information they need, not a disaggregated clump of independently developed experiences.

Creating a platform to engage and hook students

When universities consider developing a mobile platform, they need to answer four key questions: 1) What apps do students want? 2) What kind of devices need to be supported? 3) What needs to happen to get professors on the platform? and 4) What’s the plan for deployment?

There are some schools that are doing this well. Hult International Business School, which has physical campuses in San Francisco, Boston, London, Dubai and a handful of other locations around the world, has a fantastic online/mobile infrastructure. It was recently recognized by Apple as a “Standout School” for its use of technology, and it’s clear why. Not only has the school given iPads to over 1,600 students and made use of on-demand tutorials and digital textbooks, it’s gone a step or two further to create its own online apps, portals and infrastructure for students and faculty.

Schools are missing a fantastic opportunity here. By meeting students online, they can hang onto those students who would otherwise gravitate towards third-party apps. Universities are in the best position to deliver this new mobile experience — after all, the student is already on the physical campus and enrolled in the school. But if they don’t get it right, they’re in danger of losing students and professors.

Mehdi Maghsoodnia is CEO of Rafter, which provides software tools for cloud-based distribution of course materials. Rafter is also the parent company of textbook rental service Bookrenter.com.

Maghsoodnia will be discussing the development of a unified platform for personalized learning at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference Friday, September 21.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Robert S. Donovan.

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Does Android Have a Target on its Back?

James Kendrick — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:08:00 +0000

Android is the hot smartphone platform currently, and that means the competition has it squarely in its sights. Apple fired the first salvo with its patent infringement claims against HTC. HTC is the largest maker of Android phones, so the suit is a shot across the bow of Android. Then we had HTC sign a deal with Microsoft that gives the handset maker protection over potential infringement of Redmond’s intellectual property (IP) for all Android handsets sold. No matter what you think about Apple’s claims, the HTC deal with Microsoft may have the biggest long-term impact on Android.

Android is hanging in the breeze a bit due to Google’s lack of a mobile IP portfolio. The company is new to the smartphone game, so it lacks years of patents to cover its back like most of the competition. No matter which side of the fence you are on in regards to IP protection actions, having its own IP would at least give Google a fallback position against claims, current and future.

It’s hard to predict what the outcome in the Apple/ HTC case will be, but the Microsoft deal HTC signed may have a bigger affect on Android than the Apple situation. HTC is the largest maker of Android phones, and by signing the deal with Microsoft it has basically admitted that Android may indeed infringe on Redmond’s technology. HTC will pay a royalty to Microsoft on every Android phone it sells, so it’s not likely the protection deal was signed “just in case.”

Now that HTC has taken this position with Microsoft, it may behoove other Android phone makers to do the same. Motorola has emerged big in the Android space, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in conversation with Microsoft about doing a deal similar to the HTC agreement. No matter how this all shakes out, there is a potential disruption in the growth Android has been achieving since its launch. It is worth keeping an eye on this whole Android/ IP mess, and for those wanting a closer look at the situation check out my analysis (subscription required).

Do Teens Really Not Tweet?

Jennifer Martinez — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:55:30 +0000

Though Twitter is used by celebrities like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher, a recent analysis by Nielsen concluded it hasn’t yet caught on with the under-25 set, which it found accounts for just 16 percent of Twitter users. But not everyone agrees with the way the findings, gathered under the title “Teens Don’t Tweet; Twitter’s Growth Not Fueled By Youth” are being presented, nor the methodology used to procure them.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about the number of teens and young adults on Twitter, social media researcher Danah Boyd pointed out in a blog post last week. First, Boyd notes that the demographic Nielsen measured to find out how many people under the age of 25 are on Twitter spans everyone from ages 2-24, failing to distinguish between teens and young adults. Nielsen’s conclusion that teens don’t tweet also presents an interpretation problem, according to Boyd, because “saying that 16% of Twitter users are 24 and under is NOT the same as saying that 16% of teens are on Twitter.” And while comScore reported that Twitter drew 44.5 million unique visitors in June, Facebook’s audience has already passed 225 million and is still growing strong — Twitter’s numbers, in other words, show the site’s audience still has room to grow. Or as Boyd puts it, “The majority of people are not on Twitter, regardless of how old they are.”

And Facebook does appear to be the destination of choice. Professor Jon Taplin, who teaches digital entertainment classes at USC, told MarketWatch that his students “don’t care about Twitter at all,” opting to spend their time on Facebook instead.

Indeed, of the nine college students I spoke to from Stanford, UT Austin and Brown, only three said they had a Twitter account. And Ingrid Pangandoyon, a senior at Brown, said she was considering canceling her account because “I can easily get an update on my friends’ lives through Facebook.” The two others, both students at UT Austin, said they only use it every month or so. “Twitter is great for advertising and creating buzz and I don’t really think that a lot of college students are interested in that right now,” said UT Austin senior Adriana Lugo. “College students prefer following their friends or keeping in touch with their closer circle rather than reaching out to something completely unknown to them.”

Students also didn’t like that Twitter is centered entirely around status updates that are available to the rest of the web. Beyond that, some said Twitter just hasn’t caught on yet. “You might be labeled a nerd if you have a Twitter account,” according to UT Austin sophomore Ryan Rasmussen.

While teens and young adults don’t make up the lion’s share of the population on the web, they play a significant role in determining its direction. Twitter will have to start catching on with this demographic if it wants to stick around in the future.

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