Online students and faculty are demanding mobile access to their online courses and institutional resources. Focus groups with our students and faculty have shown that mobile skins for the LMS, student portal, and library are not enough to satisfy mobile users.

In this session you will explore the native application development process and technology development used by American Public University System. You will learn how this native application for both iOS and Android provides students and faculty with access to all course elements and real-time notification of new announcements, messages, forum posts, and other course elements. You will learn what the needs and wishes of online students and faculty are based on the results of focus groups held in 2013. You will discuss the design process and development of standalone middleware to meet these requirements and how the middleware development aids in adapting to learning management systems.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the evolving mobile needs of online students
• About the evolving mobile needs of online faculty
• About the design of mobile architecture for LMS integration
• About the design challenges for mobile LMS integration

Audience:

Intermediate and advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors familiar with a higher education environment and general mobile device use.               

Technology discussed in this session:

LMS-agnostic mobile middleware, online courses, native applications, iOS, and Android.