Santa Monica College Reaching Students with Mobile

Santa Monica College is turning to mobile tech to get its students' attention — and ultimately boost enrolment and degree completion. The California community college partnered with Modo Labs to deploy a mobile app and communicate with students on their preferred platform: the mobile phone.

"Traditional communication methods weren't effectively reaching students — e-mails were going unread, creating an inbox full of soon-to-be irrelevant information. Today's student expects to be reached on mobile," noted Esau Tovar, dean of enrollment services at the college, in a statement. "We were immediately impressed by the modern and flexible interface, robust communication platform, and ease of management offered by Modo Campus."

The Modo Campus platform is designed to provide a "scalable, highly personalized, engaging, mobile experience to diverse student bodies, visitors, alumni and applicants, according to the company. Students can access the college course catalog, register for classes, view their class schedule and more, all from a mobile phone.

In its first few weeks, Santa Monica College's app was downloaded 12,000 times, according to a news announcement. Based on user feedback, the institution has planned a number of improvements, including adding campus maps, financial aid deadlines and full integration with the academic portal.

"In the next year, we'll be promoting campus events with special event modules, which you can easily switch based on institutional needs, and also getting more departments, like career services, involved," said Tovar. "The app has already been hugely successful and we're excited to continue enhancing our mobile offerings with the critical information that students are looking for."

About the Author

Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • data professionals in a meeting

    Data Fluency as a Strategic Imperative

    As an institution's highest level of data capabilities, data fluency taps into the agency of technical experts who work together with top-level institutional leadership on issues of strategic importance.

  • stylized AI code and a neural network symbol, paired with glitching code and a red warning triangle

    New Anthropic AI Models Demonstrate Coding Prowess, Behavior Risks

    Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, its most advanced artificial intelligence models to date, boasting a significant leap in autonomous coding capabilities while simultaneously revealing troubling tendencies toward self-preservation that include attempted blackmail.

  • university building with classical architecture is partially overlaid by a glowing digital brain graphic

    NSF Invests $100 Million in National AI Research Institutes

    The National Science Foundation has announced a $100 million investment in National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes, part of a broader White House strategy to maintain American leadership as competition with China intensifies.

  • black analog alarm clock sits in front of a digital background featuring a glowing padlock symbol and cybersecurity icons

    The Clock Is Ticking: Higher Education's Big Push Toward CMMC Compliance

    With the United States Department of Defense's Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0 framework entering Phase II on Dec. 16, 2025, institutions must develop a cybersecurity posture that's resilient, defensible, and flexible enough to keep up with an evolving threat landscape.