This summer I designed a mobile learning organizer app called ClassCaddy to use in my courses. The app is designed specifically to solve an issue I learned about in 2010 on student exit surveys in my mass communication course: mass comm class information overload!
Collecting together the lecture videos, links, tweets, documents, podcasts, slides and various other digital learning objects in one place is the key to useability, students said.
Easily navigable, clearly organized curation of class tools makes it easier for students to discover and adopt them. Yet when that “one place” they are organized is a website, it’s so easy to get distracted by the rest of the web (well….mostly Facebook!).
Having class resources contained in a dedicated smartphone caddy app should make it easier to focus on the task at, or “in” hand.
Having said that, because a key component of any successful app is the ability to connect with friends, ClassCaddy is thoroughly socialized (Facebook/Twitter/Foursquare), and even mildly gameified (leaderboard) to encourage content sharing.
Using a CMS approach to app design lets me update the content weekly, in real-time, without having to resubmit the app for approval by Apple.
So far the Android and iOS downloads are tied. For BlackBerry users, I designed a BB-optimized mobile website here.
Adding this app to my iTunesU podcasts, SMS reminder system, and smartphone flashcards, completes my mLearning suite development projects for 2011.
I’ll wait for student feedback to see how well ClassCaddy meets their needs.
Thank you to PARTEQ Innovations for financial support, to Hayley and Annalisa for testing and UX feedback, and to MobileRoadie for great customer service.
