Overview

Seton Hall University is committed to providing a unique and advanced technological environment for students, faculty, administrators and other community members. Recognizing that the evolution of mobile technology will enable more opportunities for collaboration, community building and communication, this initiative will identify those uses of mobile technologies that will enhance the comprehensive learning experience at Seton Hall University. SHUmobile is designed in a way that emphasizes the collaboration of community members and is not only open to the community, but is eager to engage the community in order to contribute to the evolution of mobile technologies and to the advancement of teaching, learning and campus life at Seton Hall University.  

It is clear that many smart phones are now almost as powerful as the laptops the University first deployed during the mobile computing initiative. With technological advances come new opportunities for investigating the potential impact of these advances in academic, administrative and social settings.

Working with our partners, Nokia, AT&T and Schematic, Seton Hall University has developed a mobile initiative that is comprehensive and flexible, that reflects all aspects of the university community, and that can provide both common and customizable uses for all members of our community. This initiative has academic, administrative and community elements, and this fall the University is beginning its investigation into the academic potential of high end mobile devices.

In addition to academic uses, SHUmobile is also investigating how mobile applications can be designed to deliver customized and on demand access to University information, resources and services as well as providing social networking and community building. SHUmobile will launch an application that will allow students, faculty and administrators to choose content from courses, student organizations, activities, or administrative information that they will be able to access from their mobile device. For instance, the SHUmobile application will bring course grades and announcements, as well as University, or organization, event notifications directly to the students' mobile devices. Participants in the pilot program, as well as other community members, will be asked to provide feedback and recommendations on elements of the application and to make suggestions on other services and resources that will be helpful if included and designed for a mobile device.

Ultimately, the contributions of the community will shape the next stages of development of the application, which will be made available to the entire campus community, and will be available for use across a wide variety of phones and on any carrier. As functionality is added to this application, and it is made available to other types of devices, students not involved in the Academic High End Device Pilot will be invited to participate in the continuing SHUmobile application testing aspect of this initiative.

The University recognizes that it is critical to provide our community members with more opportunities to interact with each other and with University resources and services. It is also fundamental to the goals of SHUmobile that the initiative is infused with the ideas, suggestions and direction of the University community, and most importantly, our students and faculty.