Mobile student information services: A case study in Greek Open University

Abstract

The use of mobile devices is an integral part of our daily lives and they help us stay in touch with anything that interests and concerns us. This led to the emergence of the need for ubiquity, a term which is strongly associated with the modern world. Cutting edge software technologies have contributed a lot in this direction. This need is closely associated with the academic world which, by its very nature, requires constant and rapid exchange of information. To fulfill this demand, we developed a mobile application, which aims to provide ongoing information to the students of HOU (Hellenic Open University).This approach gives the opportunity to students to stay in touch with upcoming events, courses, posts and assignment grades. The functions of the application include automated user login procedures, background data fetching services and notifications features. Great importance was also given to securing the user’s credentials. An evaluation period followed the development of the application, during which students used the application and rated its features and performance. The feedback was great and the app’s user experience achieved a high score in system usability scale (SUS), i.e. 96.55%.