The Mobile Garage

Blackboard Mobile Learn wins a STEVIE!

As the school year winds down, we are having more and more institutions come to us who are interested in having our campus living and learning app (Blackboard Mobile Central) and our teaching and learning app (Blackboard Mobile Learn) in time for the Fall semester.  Although all of us in Blackboard Mobile can sooner imagine gnawing off our arm before giving up our smartphones, we love to hear other third party sources lend credibility to our feelings.  This week, a new report found that the time spent on mobile apps has surpassed time spent web browsing from a PC.

Android is open, and now Blackboard Mobile Central for Android is too

Today we announced the availability of an “SDK” for integrating other Android applications with Blackboard Mobile Central.  Ever since we released Android for Mobile Central last Fall, we’ve known that we wanted to allow third party developers to join our Android ecosystem.  Our focus is, and always will be, on creating tools that do the greatest good for the greatest number of our users. This means that specialized tools (discipline-specific assessment tools, regional utilities, integration with specific systems) aren’t something we’re likely to develop ourselves. Now, with the Android SDK for Mobile Central, schools can integrate those tools themselves.

FSU Mobile

After seeing the iStanford demo I recorded for our blog a few weeks ago, Debbie Kelly, the Assistant Director of Web Services, at FSU thought a similar video would be a great tool for the soon-to-be freshman as they gather on campus for their summer orientation.  We went over some of the handy features for new students and FSU will be using the video throughout their summer orientation.  Now the newbies on FSU's campus have no excuses for not being able to find their freshman seminars!

 

 

 

Check out FSU Mobile on iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, webOS and the Mobile Web!

 

Driving Student Retention with iLMU Mobile

Loyola Marymount University recently launched LMU Live, a custom application integrated into the University’s mobile app, iLMU mobile. In this interview with LMU’s Shira Gotshalk, Web Manager, Web, New Media and Design, we learn more about how this innovative app works, how LMU is hoping the app will help drive student retention, and what’s next for iLMU mobile.

Why did you decide to go mobile? 
The idea came from a recruitment perspective: we wanted to have a way of reaching beyond our LMU community to prospective students and parents.

Can you tell me about the genesis of LMU Live?
We wanted to reach out to our faculty, students, and staff on campus and ask, “What is your LMU experience? How are you involved in campus life? And what is life like being a part of LMU?”
 
We have a new building on campus, the Von Der Ahe Building. It just opened in January, and it’s our new Welcome Center, as well as home to our bookstore, admissions, financial aid, and the first year student experience office. We thought this would be the perfect place to have a large wall display of monitors, and wanted to come up with an interactive way of having people post their daily experience at LMU. 
 
We realized that iLMU mobile was the perfect
way to have people communicate their daily experience with the little tool in their pocket.