OPUS (Online Pathway to University Students) is Emory’s online student information system and we are pleased to announce that a mobile version of this key service is right around the corner.
Consumer and business applications are increasingly mobile enabled. Customers desire mobile access to services, employees and students rely on mobile enterprise applications and partners need mobile connections to the enterprise. Many enterprises expect that these customers, employees, students and partners want to be connected anytime and anywhere using applications that meet their specific user expectations.
A recent Nielsen report showed that smart phone penetration continues to grow, with 54.9 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers owning smart phones as of June 2012. This growth is driven by increasing smart phone purchases: two out of three Americans who acquired a new mobile phone in the last three months chose a smart phone instead of a feature phone.
Student use of internet capable phones has grown dramatically in the past several years since last year’s undergraduate students ready to graduate first enrolled. In Spring 2009, smartphone ownership was only 27.1% of the student body, yet a mere 4 years later 79.1% of the students owned smart phones. These numbers come from a UTS survey to the student body about device usage. Also growing at a rapid rate for this population is the usage of other internet enabled smart devices such as iPads, eReaders, and tablets.
With the rapid growth of these many types of devices and the general expectation of students to be able to perform tasks at any time in any place, we prefer to implement the tools to meet this expectation to continue to attract the best and brightest students. A mobile strategy is essential to meeting this need.
The mobile application for OPUS was designed by HighPoint Mobile. We will have two delivery dates: December and March.
Go live in December with view-only capability:
- View Admissions Application Status
OPUS Mobile will go live in December! - View and Accept/Decline Financial Aid
- View Student Financials Account
- View Class Schedule with Campus Map Lookup
- View Course Catalog
- View Grades
- View Exam Schedule
- View Advisor Information
- View Waitlist Courses
- View Friends’ Class Schedule
- View Graduation Status
Go live in March with transactional functionality:
- Accept/Decline Financial Aid
- Enrollment – add, drop, swap
- Payments
There is also a great video from HighPoint – we won’t be implementing all of those features, but it’s a good insight as to what’s coming!
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