Mobile and Google, our contributions to UCISA 2011

We've been involved in a couple of presentations here at UCISA. Last year we won the poster competition for our CampusM poster, so as a consequence we got invited to do a showcase session. Although it was mainly about our implementation about CampusM, I also shared some of the results of our mobile survey.

Some quick figures:
99.6% of our students have a mobile phone, and 56% of them have a smart phone. 25% are going to upgrade to a smart phone within the next year.
Around 50% of the smart phone owners connect to the wireless network. The rest either don't because they don't know about it, don't know how to, or have tried and can't.
IPhone and blackberry make up around 50% of all smart phones.
25% of students use CampusM, 25% know about it but don't use it, and 50% have never heard of it.
The top five things students like about it are:
Library information
Calendar
PC Availability
Locations
Friend locator

The top five things they don't like are
Library information
Friend locator
Calendar
Design
Speed

Notice any similarity? 3 appear on both lists, and the comments show that is because they like the functionality, but there's something wrong or missing. So, friends don't log in to the finder, you can't reserve a library book, or the data in the calendars is wrong.

When asked what new functionality they wanted, it was nearly all transactional - they want to reserve a book, book a PC or room. Also to see financial information and see their exam results.

Some other headlines, 96% of students have a laptop, and 70% connect them to our wireless network. The rest have problems connecting, but a substantial proportion don't bring their laptops onto campus. 80% of laptops run windows, 12% mac and the rest Linux.

Lots of interest in CampusM, who had produced an app for the conference which people could access on iPads loaned to them by Apple. A previous session had been on the Oxford Mobile project, which is not an app, but web based, and it was interesting to compare the different approaches.

The other presentation was a joint one with Google as part of their business showcase, and was about our implementation for google apps. Many universities doing it for students, but not many doing it for staff. We explained how we made the decision, some issues with implementation, although there haven't been many, and what we're doing next. Staff mail is n the middle of being moved, Google docs will be turned on in May, and then calendar will hopefully go live when we've moved all the data, hopefully June. A lot of interest in what we're doing, with predictable questions about data storage and security.

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