UFV’s mobile app was unveiled yesterday. Focusing on student interests, the app offers academic and campus specific information. Some of these features include class schedules, access to grades, and campus information, among other tools and utilities.
“It’s primarily just a tool for students to make things a little easier for them,” said Caleb Zimmerman, director of marketing and recruitment.
The app also includes a map with GPS waypoints for buildings on the Abbotsford campus. If location services are enabled, it will display relative location to each building and allow users to search for the location of the campus’ main buildings. Currently this feature only applies on the Abbotsford campus.
The app also includes a Blackboard (myClass) integration component. If the Blackboard app is already installed and activated on the device, selecting “myClass (Bb Student)” on the UFV app’s sidebar will redirect to the Blackboard application. If Blackboard is not installed, the UFV app will prompt an installation notification from the app store.
Darin Lee, chief information officer of information technology services oversaw the technical side of the app’s design.
“One of the things that I was pretty motivated by was making sure we weren’t just making an app because people were asking for an app, we actually had some functionality,” said Lee.
Other features that the app includes are the phone directory, shuttle bus schedule, links to social media channels, and news and events.
While there is some notification capability, the UFV student email service Zimbra is not yet connected to the app. Lee said that it hasn’t been made to be a part of the app yet, but it could become another component if there is enough demand. Currently the notification tab may be used for reminders such as payment deadlines.
“There’s of course all kinds of things that we’re going to continue to improve, a lot of it will be based on feedback we get from students,” said Zimmerman.
The UFV app had already seen some student useage during a pilot test phase with a group of 20 students before it launched.
The app was developed in house by UFV employees in both the University Relations and Information Technology Services departments (ITS). The platform for the app was created by a company that specializes in resources for educational institutions and is also the creator of the platform for myUFV.
While ITS handled the back end and built the technical side of the app, university relations focused on what exactly will face the users. They are also responsible for promotion and to ensure that the app’s features are useful to students. Both groups focused highly on making the app relevant to students.
“One of the things that I was pretty motivated by was making sure we weren’t just making an app because people were asking for an app, we actually had some functionality,” said Lee.
The UFV app was built off of a platform that most universities use so it will share similar functionality with other university apps. While the app won’t offer exactly the same features, it will deliver a similar experience and may resemble other designs.
Ultimately, the app was designed predominantly to be used by students.
“I think there’s expectation particularly from students, that they should be able to do things on their mobile phone,” said Lee.
Because of this, Zimmerman and Lee both welcome feedback on the app’s functionality and what students would like to see included.
“We really want to hear what people liked, what they didn’t like, what was useful, what was useless,” said Zimmerman. “That will allow us to make it more useful for students.”
