Georgia Southern University Builds App Store to Fulfill End Users' Needs

He also says the app store enables students the freedom to connect and engage with GSU no matter where they are.

“Envision a class that has an online component where there are discussions going on,” says Skidmore, Director of Product Marketing at Apperian . “They don’t have to be tethered to their laptop or to the school library or anywhere. They can just be connected by their tablet or phone and have this continuous learning aspect wherever they happen to be. I think that’s something that’s going to change the way learning is seen and done.”

Stalnaker says the app store has been a positive experience for GSU, and has inspired more conversations between IT members and end users.

“Having an app store allows us to have specific conversations with those individual audiences,” he says. “We can create a specific app for faculty gradebooks, for our university portal, etc. It focuses our conversations on what problems we’re trying to solve.”

Advice for Building Your Own App Store

Just do it.

Wasgatt says colleges shouldn’t think twice about implementing an app store.

He says an app store will instantly provide end users, especially students, with handy benefits.

“When you’re a freshman walking onto campus, having a mobile resource on your phone becomes a resource packet to say hey, here are all the apps [you can use],” he says. “It makes them more comfortable than by hearing things through word of mouth. It allows a student to have another level of engagement.”

Conduct inventory of your apps.

Stalnaker says that while implementing an app store, colleges should take an inventory of apps that are available to faculty, staff and students.

That way, colleges can determine which apps to keep or axe, and configure how they will introduce those apps to end users.

“We started doing inventory of all the apps we had and we were shocked to know the amount of apps that were available to our customers,” Stalnaker says. “We didn’t even know about them, and our customers probably didn’t know about them either…When we did inventory, we had about 65 apps that were available to our user base. The advice I would give anybody is start with an inventory of apps that are available to your customer.”