Student Mobile Services Should be More User-Friendly, Survey Says

Mobile apps and optimized websites have been on the rise for a number of years. But the quality of student services in these formats could use some upgrading, university students and administrators said in a report released Tuesday, Aug. 28.

Oracle did online interviews in May with 1,003 U.S. college and university students and 181 U.S. higher education administrators to find out more about their experience with student services.* These services were found to have a direct impact on 66 percent of students' and 89 percent of administrators' overall satisfaction with a college or university.

More than half of students surveyed agreed that their college or university meets their customer service expectations, particularly in the areas of system availability and ease of information access. And the student service offices of admissions and class registration/enrollment received the highest ratings.

However, three areas need improvement: mobile readiness, service personalization and information security. Of the people surveyed, only 27 percent of college administrators and 39 percent of students ranked mobile access to student services as "very good."

Here are a few of the student's comments from the "Making the Grade: Optimizing the Higher Education Student Experience" report:

• "All student services that I need are accessible, but not exactly user friendly in mobile form."
• "I'd like to see enrollment and more details on my schedule through mobile applications."
• "Everything is through the website instead of an app so it moves very slowly. Email, in particular, would be wonderful in an app."

Twenty-three percent of students and 34 percent of administrators said their school should focus on providing mobile apps to improve student service.

More universities are rethinking their mobile strategy, such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Southeastern Louisiana University. Increasingly, institutions are looking to personalize the information that's accessible on mobile devices so that students can see grades, schedules and other types of data on their mobile devices.

And more universities are creating apps, according to the 2011 Campus Computing Survey of 496 senior IT officials. In fall 2011, 55.3 percent of public universities deployed mobile apps, a 23 percent jump from the previous year.

*The student sample has a ±3.02% margin of error at a 95 percent confidence level.The administrator sample has a ±7.95% at a 95% confidence level.