Momentum is building behind mobile, like a tsunami gliding unseen across the ocean. On a seemingly daily basis, we hear about the ever-increasing role of mobile in our lives. We experience it first-hand, too.

Invariably, web developers at universities have started to jump on the bandwagon. Some very polished mobile interfaces have emerged recently, with functionality also on the rise. We’ve even seen early lists of the best mobile websites in higher ed.

Browsing these sites, you notice a few common threads. Maps, news, people directory, emergency alerts, laundry machine status …

Anything that a fair number of people use and is easy to grab has been making its way into higher ed mobile sites. The low-hanging fruit is being plucked.

I don’t mean to say that this is a bad idea. When building something new, you have to start somewhere. And these attempts do look pleasant.

What’s missing: academic utility

But they’re missing something very key: academic-focused applications. My recent search for academic pursuits in mobile turned up only a handful of projects going on (I’ll review these in a future posting).

The challenge is obvious. Universities tend to purchase commercial learning management products and become reliant on the vendor’s development team to implement new features. Though Blackboard recently launched a mobile product, it is really just a hack to make the system’s offerings somewhat accessible on smartphone devices.

Start from scratch

Meeting the mobile challenge requires a lot more. We need to start thinking mobile first when we design applications and websites. Course content must be created with the assumption that students will be accessing it from smartphones.

In short, higher ed’s online academic environment has been constructed around desktops and laptops and we can’t just force existing course content into the small screen. We need to start re-thinking how we present and build it.

Twitter in the classroom?

At the same time, mobile devices also give us the opportunity to build exciting, dynamic, and social applications that can enhance the learning environment. Look at how Twitter has changed the way an audience experience presentations and interacts with presenters. We need to be experimenting  with that in classrooms.

Opportunities

If you’ve been thinking about getting into mobile, right now is the perfect time to start getting serious. We know that the academic landscape is changing, and mobile is a tremendous opportunity to experiment with.

Eventually, that tsunami is going to make landfall. Will higher ed be ready?

Have thoughts?

I would really like to hear from you about academic offerings for mobile. E-mail me: dave@davemulder.com