Dive Brief:
- The University of San Diego has developed a university-specific mobile app to help students stay organized, using data imported from the school’s learning management system, student information system, and relationship management tool.
- Campus Technology reports USD Insight, created by developers in-house, has been used primarily by the university’s freshmen and sophomores, and while their use creates a lot of data on student activity, the university is still creating a process to use that data for analytics.
- USD Vice Provost and CIO Christopher Wessells expects more universities to tackle in-house development work in the coming years as personalization becomes more important to students and institutions, and mobile-first applications create greater competition for existing portals.
Dive Insight:
The University of San Diego’s IT department allowed developers to spend time creating innovative new applications for students instead of exclusively contracting with third-party vendors. Wessells told Campus Technology this latitude keeps his team intellectually challenged.
Chief technology officers continue to report concerns about staffing in Educause’s annual survey of the field. The No. 4 issue of 2016 was IT workforce. Top talent can make more money in corporate offices or other industries. With digital technology becoming increasingly important in higher education, however, colleges and universities are being forced to compete as best they can. Investing internally in innovation may be one way to keep up.