Leicester App and Blackboard Mobile Learn

On Friday 14th December, our newly-renamed Handheld Learning Group met around cookies and brownies to discuss the recent launch of the Leicester app and Blackboard Mobile Learn. I had been thinking of these two as separate things, but they are connected and they are both ultimately made available by Blackboard.

On the Apple store, you can find the Leicester app by searching for LeicesterUni (I don't know if it is titled the same in the Android store). It is free. When you download it, you can see a gateway into Blackboard. You need your university login for that part; it is an applet called Blackboard Mobile Learn (which can actually be downloaded as a separate app). Blackboard Mobile Learn offers users most functions of Blackboard in a custom-made environment for their mobile device -- even Blackberry.

The LeicesterUni app was launched rather quietly after autumn term started, and since then, even with not much publicity, it has been downloaded over 3000 times. 2500 of these have been to iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch). Besides the Blackboard section, the app offers campus maps, a way to quickly find a free campus PC, and a portal into the library search system, plus more. The ITS and Marketing joint project team responsible for the app have been meeting with students to keep up on student opinion and wishes for further development. I asked how staff could register a request for something to be added to the app, and the answer is that there is a feedback button on the app (it's kind of hard to see and it looks like a lightning flash), where email addresses are listed to register such requests.

LeicesterUni app on iOS

As for Blackboard Mobile Learn itself, ITS have written some guidelines about what definitely does not work and what definitely does work:

• Blackboard Mobile Learn help page – overview of what will work and links to documents from Blackboard with more details
• Best practice for mobile – how can you make your Blackboard course sites work better from a mobile device?

And Catherine Leyland of ITS says "This information is a starting point but needs to be developed as we use Blackboard mobile more within the University and get more idea of what works and how best to use it.  If anyone does come across anything else they want to share, useful tips etc. then could you let me know and I’ll update these pages?" So there is our invitation!

As for me, I have been encouraging instructors to solicit feedback from their students regarding Blackboard Mobile Learn, so that we can be aware of issues and how the students are using it.

Terese Bird, Learning Technologist, University of Leicester

Nature launches iPad app

Nature becomes the first major league scientific publisher to offer a free iPad app. Unlike most of Nature's content, that selected for the app is free.

Is it any good? What does it add to the free content already available on the Nature website? Has the world gone app mad?

Mobile Google+ Communities

On Friday, Google launched Google+ Communities. What are these good for? We don't know yet, but they are broadly equivalent to Facebook groups and as those have lots of applications, Communities look like they might be interesting.

An initial frustration was the inability to access Communities on mobile devices, specifically tablets, as they don't appear on the Google+ app or the mobile version of the site Google (wrongly) forces on tablet users. Thankfully, George Station came up with a workaround. Use the Chrome browser and at the Google+ login page, select Request Desktop Site from the dropdown menu under the Settings cog:

That should work, although you may need to log out and back in again a couple of times, then you should have access to Communities:

See you there!

Alan Cann

Biological Sciences