The Custom iPhone App: Mobile ACU

The in-house developed iPhone App that students use, Mobile ACU, is a Web-based application (It doesn't run natively on the iPhone.) The application has three main sections: ACU Mobile, simply an iPhone-optimized version of the university's website; My Mobile, the real heart of the app, where students and faculty can log in to access ACU mail, course information, account balances, learning tools and more; and the ACU Pocket Guide, which provides a wide variety of information about local events, businesses and services in and around Abilene, Texas.

Anyone with an iPhone can access Mobile ACU (via the device's Safari browser at m.acu.edu) to get information about the university, including locations of nearby organizations, upcoming events, news and maps of the area. Thus the publicly accessible Pocket Guide portion of Mobile ACU can help not only students but also travelers to the area.

But the most valuable--and unique--Mobile ACU features live in the My Mobile section of the application. To access My Mobile ACU, students and staffers click on a tab on the Mobile ACU home screen and enter their login information.

ACU My Mobile Home Screen

There are various student-oriented features within My Mobile, as well as faculty-centric functionality, and it's accessible anywhere there's cellular coverage or an available Wi-Fi network--though the iPod touch doesn't have a cellular connection, it does have Wi-Fi support and the Safari browser.

The My Mobile home screen presents users with a variety of timely personalized information, such as assignments due on that particular day and later in the week. Students can also find information on how many campus events are happening that day and week. A "Classes" section helps students retrieve course materials and assignments and check personal calendars.

Professors have a different set of features, based on permissions assigned to them by IT administrators. Specifically, professors can click on the "Classes" section of My ACU to see a course roster, which can be used to collect and track attendance. In fact, the roster function includes images of all students--where available--next to a color-coded square with the letters "P" for present, "T" for tardy, "E" for excused and "A" for absent. Professors need only tap the appropriate letter to take attendance.

ACU My Mobile Student Attendance Tool

The attendance screen also helps professors memorize the names of new students: professors can choose to remove the names from below the images of students and then jumble the photos to see if they can recall the correct names. Professors can also choose to view attendance over time as a sort of color-coded bar graph below each student's image.

Both student and faculty members have access to a function called "Nano Tools"--Langford jokingly says the name was inspired by the fact that the currently available tools are only one billionth of what professors will eventually want; the real name means "No Advanced Notice." Nano Tools provide professors and students with components for creating and participating in iPhone-based learning activities on the fly.

In other words, teachers can create polls almost instantly, to save time in class. Professors can also ask multiple choice questions of students, collect responses instantly via iPhone and then display the consensus answers in word cloud format. (Not familiar with word clouds? See CIO.com's Advice and Opinion section that uses a word cloud to collect common tags on the site.)

Another noteworthy feature of My Mobile: students and faculty members can access shared drives via iPhone. Powered and secured by document management and collaboration firm Xythos, the Files section of My Mobile gives each student and faculty member access to personal drives. Here they can store various class files, as well as course-specific folders for dropping off and picking up assignments or revisions.

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