The Pros and Cons to Using Apps and Mobile Devices in Your College

Amos Wasgatt says apps and mobile devices are must-have features on today’s college campuses.

He says students expect these features as a regular asset to their learning and living resources, and will overlook schools that fail to deliver.

“I think schools are starting to realize that they have to go mobile, that they have to provide students with the ability to add and drop a class because they can’t get the professor they want, etc.,” says Wasgatt, Sales Executive of Apperian.

A look at one of the apps provided in GSU’s app store. Photo by Paul Reaves, IT Services Communications for Officer Georgia Southern University.

Wasgatt also says apps and mobile devices are migrating into the work world students will enter post-college, and will be the dominant technologies by the time today’s college students graduate.

Because of this, he says laptops and desktop computers will become the next fossilized equipment.

“Today, everyone who’s in their 40’s and 50’s make up the work force, and a lot of them got comfortable with Blackberries,” Wasgatt says. “Then they’re trying to get comfortable with Apple – they had to relearn the way they did things. But now, those people who are coming up through school, they can figure out how to use an iPad, iPhone, whatever you put in front of them. They don’t know how to use a laptop, but they can figure out how to use a mobile device.”

In order to prepare for this new wave of mobile device usage and app access in the work world, Stephen Skidmore, Director of Product Marketing at Apperian, says colleges are investing time and money into new mobile strategies.

One of these mobile strategies includes app stores, like the one Georgia Southern University (GSU) recently invested in.

“We believe [app stores] are the best practice,” Skidmore says. “You want to give your user an experience that they’re familiar with. They’re familiar with the public app store experiences of Apple and Google, and if they’re using Microsoft technology, they know how to navigate and find apps there. What we like to provide is a parallel experience for the university app store and make it so easy that there’s not going to be an issue where students and faculty are confused on how to use it.”