About the Survey

 Mobile Student Interest Survey

(Construction – Focus Group – Questions – Distribution – Results – Future)

Image representing an online surveyWe conducted a survey of students to help gauge their wants and needs with mobile on campus.

The survey resulted in 252 student submissions.

Brief Survey Construction History

  • Student focus group interviews
  • UIUC Office of Admissions and Record review
  • Survey approval by I.R.B.

 

Student Focus Groups conversation-545621_1280

To get us started with the process of gathering student input, we conducted multiple focus group sessions. These face-to-face meetings were a great way for us to have candid and insightful conversations with students from all walks for life.

We started with a survey of 9 open ended conversational questions we asked the students. Each question was asked and responses were added to an online survey tool to help us gather the results.

As we asked the questions, we had plenty of back and forth communication between the students allowing us to identify which questions made the most sense, which were redundant, etc…This led us to create the survey we ended up getting IRB Approval for and conducting online. That survey came after many focus groups and many rounds of edits. The questions we ultimately used are below.

Survey Questions

question-685060_1280

1.) What is your top idea or request to improve your mobile computing experience at UIUC? This is your chance to tell us exactly what you think is missing from your mobile experience.

  • Open-ended text response

2.) Please RATE how USEFUL each of these features would be on a smartphone, pad or tablet. (They were given the options of high, medium, or low for each)

INSTRUCTION/COURSEWORK

  • Collaboration tools to connect with faculty and/or other students
  • Course content throughout semester (viewing videos, readings, etc)
  • Help with projects, papers, research, media creation, etc…
  • Grades/Scores
  • Office hours (instructors)
  • Instructor feedback

ADVISING/REGISTRATION/RECORDS

  • View your class schedule
  • Register for a course
  • Build your schedule
  • Drop a course
  • Advisor appointments
  • DARS audit / Major & minor requirements
  • View academic history

CAMPUS LIFE

  • Campus maps
  • Campus events schedule & info
  • Computer lab information and assistance tools
  • Employment help (Student work or Career services)
  • Library services and assistance
  • Safety alerts/contacts
  • Technical support

3.) Enter any additional features that we didn’t cover in the options above that you think would be useful on a smartphone, pad or tablet?

  • Open-ended text response

4.) Check the device(s) you use daily?

  •  Laptop
  • Lab or Desktop computer
  • Pad/Tablet
  • Smart phone

5.) Which method would you prefer for accessing academic and campus Information on a smartphone, pad or tablet?

  • I prefer a mobile app I can download from an app store
  • I prefer a mobile-friendly website I can view from my device’s web browser (i.e. Safari, FireFox, Chrome, IE)
  • Either option is fine with me, as long as I can find the information I need and it’s easy to read

 

Distribution image representing communication

We created a distribution/communication strategy which relied on every subgroup within our mobile focus group to play a part. The communications used to send out the survey were all approved by IRB. Here is a rough overview…

Digital Signage – Library

Social Media – CITL, Technology Services

Student Worker Groups – Technology Services

Large Lecture Classes – Technology Services

Email Lists – Technology Services, Office of the Provost

We all took part in trying to get the word out to students. We will learn from our first round and grow our audience for future communications.

Results checkmark

Check out the Survey Results page

Future/ What’s Next

Our Mobile Focus Group has already started using the results to form an action plan for a mobile app or service to meet students’ needs.

The_road_ahead_(2046262670)Part of the efforts of this group led to a joint partnership between AITS, Technology Services, and CITL. The result is a mobile app made FOR student WITH students involved in every step of the process.

This is only the beginning!!

Even as we move forward with action resulting from the survey, we are still wanting to continually evaluate the needs of campus.

We welcome suggestions and feedback on improving this process.