Ball State is developing a phone app to combat the large volume of emails students receive, starting with the daily notification dashboard summaries from Blackboard.
Ball State’s Communications Center has sent out approximately 51 million e-mails to registered students since Jan. 1, 2014, not including Blackboard messages and other academic related notifications, said Kyle Parker, senior software engineer for Developing Technologies.
The app, called Campus Hub, will intercept Blackboard's daily emails and use notifications instead. The app will also make it easier to check Blackboard on mobile devices. Campus Hub uses a free service from Context.IO to intercept the emails.
“We know students get a lot of email and we know Blackboard can be difficult to navigate on a mobile device,” Parker said “It’s not always the easiest to get through.”
Parker said the app will show testing lab availability in addition to Blackboard notifications. He said other features may be added, including notifications for holds on students' accounts from the Bursar's or Registrar's offices.
Eric Barlow, a senior telecommunications major and digital production supervisor in the Digital Corps, served in a student focus group for the app. He said Campus Hub is similar to a social media feed because it opens to a home page and contains different messages for different topics.
“You can real quickly get some of the key information you need and it simplifies a student’s life,” Barlow said.
Barlow said students in the focus group, including himself, would likely download the app and use it.
“When we were able to get our hands on it for the first time everybody liked [the app],” Barlow said. “I think everybody agreed that it was very useful.”
While there is no set launch date for the app, Parker said the Android version of the app is complete and the iOS version is still being worked on.
Developing Technologies plans to submit the app in the “Context.IO App Challenge,” a contest through Devpost, a company where app developers can showcase their work.
Students may visit the contest website and vote for the app until Sept. 17.
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