Mobile Computing | News
University of Wisconsin-Stout Launches Mobile App
The University of Wisconsin-Stout (UW-Stout) has released a new mobile app to provide its students, faculty, staff, and the public with information about the campus.
The app is available for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry smartphones and provides course schedules, campus maps, athletic information, key phone numbers, admissions, and other information, as well as enabling students to make tuition payments. The university anticipates that the two most popular features among students will be the bus tracker that shows the real-time location of buses and the campus residence washer and dryer tracker that shows which machines are in use and how much time remains on their cycles.
The university recently completed a redesign of its Web site, including a mobile site, but after reviewing its site statistics and mobile apps from other universities, a UW-Stout committee decided to develop the mobile app.
"The Web profession is buzzing with the reality that Web sites need to optimize their content and features for mobile users to the extent that many experts are advocating that sites be designed for mobile first, with traditional computer users becoming a secondary audience," said Barbara Button, UW-Stout Web coordinator, in a prepared statement. "We can see this trend in our statistics, as mobile access to our Web site is increasing every month."
The UW-Stout committee developed the app using AT&T Campus Guide, a platform to help colleges and universities develop and deploy customized apps for mobile devices. According to Kay Schnur, director of enterprise information systems for the university, UW-Stout chose AT&T Campus Guide as a platform because of its agility and ability to grow with changes, which makes it easier for the university to add new features in the future. The UW-Stout app currently works on smartphones only but will work on tablets when the AT&T Campus Guide platform adds tablet support.
The UW-Stout app is available for free through the Apple App Store, Google Play, and BlackBerry App World. Further information about the app is available at uwstout.edu.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at leilameyer@gmail.com.