How a Governance Program Can Curb the Mobile "Wild West"

With mobile computing integral to every aspect of campus life, it's important for schools to create order out of the chaos with a multiyear strategy and governance plans.

• By Toni Fuhrman
• 11/08/12

By now, just about every college and university has embarked on a mobile program. But who "owns" the mobile app program? Who makes the decisions? What will the program look like three years from now? How will it be funded, and who will be included in the planning? Surprisingly few schools have developed a long-term plan that answers these and other key questions about the mobile program on campus.

In the initial excitement and rush to field a campus mobile app, it's easy to overlook some of the more mundane aspects of management and oversight. At some point, though, schools need to put some structure and governance in place. This involves strategy, planning, investment, and evaluating plans for future apps in the context of learning, ownership, rules, and guidelines.

"I call it mobile enablement," said Phil Chatterton, director of digital media technologies at the University of British Columbia, which has campuses in Vancouver and Okanagan.

With more than 47,000 full-time students on the Vancouver campus and close to 7,000 additional students at Okanagan, UBC recognized that a mobile governance plan was essential. To implement the program, UBC brought in Chatterton "to provide digital media technology leadership, and to create a collaborative community focused on the improvement of digital channels." In fall 2011, Chatterton launched a three-pronged approach, which included a mobile-optimized website, iOS and Android native apps, and a new student services site. The beta version of the mobile website was launched in September of this year—the first componentof UBC's three-year strategy.

"We look on this as a paradigm shift," said Chatterton, who was hired by UBC from Blackboard Collaborate."We wanted to take a look at modern digital channels, to see how we could make them work, and how they would impact our campuses."

To begin with, Chatterton and his team gathered a team of IT professionals from around campus to evaluate vendors. They opted for Modo Labs, which supports the development of the Kurogo platform. "Basically, it's a hybrid model, where an open-source platform meets a commercially supported product. We can build modules into the core framework, but we're really following the Kurogo platform."

Kurogo starts with a mobile website and builds native apps out from there. "About 85 percent of students can use the native apps on iOS and Android devices," explained Chatterton,"but we want to make the program accessible to all students who have browser-enabled smartphones." While everyone can access the mobile website, the native apps provide certain features that are not available on the web program.

Establishing Governance
To create mobile content and establish an ownership framework, Chatterton and his team brought in representatives from more than a dozen campus groups: the president's office, development, communications, risk management, bookstores and libraries, public affairs, student affairs, IT, academic units, hospitality, security and parking services, transportation, and campus and community planning.

"Each module and native app is owned by the stakeholder on campus," Chatterton continued. "Ultimately, I'm the business owner--I run the underlying program--although the stakeholder buy-in is key."

By establishing clearly defined roles and responsibilities, UBC wanted to head off any possibility that the mobile arena on campus could turn into a kind of technological Wild West. "If everybody on campus is doing their own thing, it can create a lot of confusion," noted Chatterton. "It's also such a big space that it can seem overwhelming without an underlying structure supporting development and collaboration."

To create order out of the chaos, Chatterton acknowledged that he had to organize a lot of meetings. "I spent a lot of time meeting with stakeholders, trying to sell our vision," he recalled. "I sat down with students and talked about their current experience and what they want from mobile. I looked at statistics and data. We launched surveys open to students, staff, and faculty."

While faculty were involved in the launch, the first year's rollout is largely aimed at students. Next year, the program will be more directly aimed at faculty. "We call our current program 'beta' because we want to assess the program over the next year or two, and determine how successful it has been," said Chatterton.

He recommends several key steps for schools to follow when implementing a mobile strategy: