Dive Brief:
- A new partnership with mobile app OOHLALA will help San Jose State University better assist its student population to get more involved in college life, particularly those who commute to the school, according to Sonja Daniels, the associate vice president for campus life.
- According to Daniels, the new app will help the school formulate new approaches to campus activities, and based on data submitted by students, administrators can learn which activities were most popular, and for whom.
- Students can utilize the app for peer-to-peer communication, student groups can use it for outreach, and school officers can see which students are not engaged in school life.
Dive Insight:
Utilizing a mobile app may benefit students with unconventional schedules, like those working part- or full-time or commuting to campus. The majority of students enrolled in San Jose State University, for example, are commuters. Students living on-campus have more opportunity by virtue of proximity to learn about extra-curricular events or opportunities that can assist them in their educational or professional career. Offering off-campus students access to the same information at any time via their mobile devices could help them better schedule those opportunities around the other professional and personal responsibilities they have.
Schools interested in incorporating mobile tools to reach a more expansive range of their student population (and also using data gleaned from the process for assessing aspects of the school) must be sure that the institution’s IT team can contextualize the data to make it usable for judging whether adjustments should be made. Additionally, schools must also be cognizant of digital equity gaps. Smartphones are becoming ubiquitous on college campuses, but it is not inherent that all students have access to the tech. Therefore, schools will need to ensure that in-person forms of outreach and communication are still available for students who may not have access to such devices when they arrive on campus.