Takeaway: The most effective campus apps are shaped by student feedback, because student participation helps institutions build experiences that feel more useful, relevant, and engaging from the start.
- Learn why student involvement leads to stronger adoption and better long-term app performance.
- See how feedback can improve priorities, navigation, and overall user experience.
- Explore whether there are any AI-driven tools that can help integrate personalized content to enhance student and faculty engagement on campus.
In the 12 years since we started Modo and began working with higher education institutions, we’ve noticed a growing trend—greater student involvement in all phases of campus app development. From pre-design and planning through content development and feature feedback.
Much of this has evolved from adopting user experience-led design strategies focused on user behaviors and expectations. What better way to design with the student in mind than to involve students in the process.
Another contributing factor has been the expanded role of the mobile campus app. Once seen as strictly a replacement for archaic, web-based portals, higher ed administrators now view campus apps as a critical component to augment recruitment efforts, improve student retention, support student wellness, drive on-campus engagement, and more. Supporting these efforts requires the right content, features, and design — areas students can and should be involved in creating.
At Northern Arizona University (NAU), which won the 2022 Appademy Awards for Best New Student Orientation and Most Innovative app, student input in the NAUgo app’s content and design has helped make it an integral part of student life.
“The entire life of the app is driven by students, from ideas for what to include, to the content, to the design, development, and testing. This level of involvement ensures our app meets the needs of our students throughout their NAU journey,” shared Patricia Allenbaugh, senior user experience analyst at NAU.
Benefit From Student Insight in the App Pre-Design and Planning Phases
Student involvement in the early ideation phase can take many forms, from steering committees to focus groups to polls and surveys. Schools that have taken this approach have seen greater engagement, improved functionality, and increased user satisfaction with their campus apps.
“We have a student committee [and] included the student government membership right from the get-go,” said Madhavi Marasinghe, CIO at the University of North Dakota (UND), during a recent webinar on the digital campus experience. “Since then, they have been part of [the] steering committee. So, they actually [provide] input on the functionality they are looking for…It’s their app at the end of the day.”
As a result, Marasinghe reports the UND app’s download rate has reached 98%, an important KPI for her team.
In addition to feedback on design and functionality, schools are using student input and cost-benefit analysis to prioritize which in-demand functions get rolled out.
Chad Stiller, AVP, IT at NAU, shared during the same webinar, “We…use student input to guide all the implementations, the phasing, and the priorities. We also use [students] a lot for testing…this is absolutely their tool and listening to their needs, their priorities frequently… engaging your student body, whether through surveys or feedback in the app, or…having a seat on the governance…You have to have those voices to help you prioritize.”
Gain Valuable Knowledge on App Development and UX
With a digital engagement platform like Modo Campus that features low-code / no-code app development tools and customizable modules, students can be involved in app development regardless of their technical skills. This approach lessens the burden on IT departments and gives students a more significant role in the success of their campus app.
NAU, Penn State, and Illinois College, among others, engage their students as citizen developers for their campus apps.
“Our students regularly participate in beta testing and surveys and take on leadership roles in the development and design processes of the app,” said Ryan Seilhamer, Penn State Go Product Owner.
Once a working version of your campus app is built, students play a vital role in user acceptance testing (UAT) to identify any issues with the User Experience (UX). UAT involves testing the app’s functionality and outcomes and should be completed before the app launches.
Items to consider for UX design in mobile app development:
- Speed — Your app may have two to three seconds to load before losing users.
- Clarity of function and purpose —What are the core functions and objectives of the app? What activities or experiences will it be used for? Will it depend on user-generated content?
- Navigation and taxonomy — How users find their way around the app and locate functions can be simplified with icons, like a text bubble for a chat or a magnifying glass to indicate a search field. Two to three layers of taxonomy within your app will provide the best results.
- User journeys — A defined series of steps your app will walk the user through. Focus on simplicity and intuitive design and limit choices to three or fewer for users to select at each stage of the journey.
Encourage Student Support in Content Creation and Publishing
User-generated content can be vital to creating and maintaining an exceptional campus app.
“This is one of those perfect examples of where the students can help us,” said Marasinghe.
Student-generated content brings new ideas and strategies to improve the app. Students are the ideal audience to answer questions like how do we engage students in campus life? How do we make them aware and use campus resources? What do different personas need or want?
“We have personas for [the] first-year students, right? So, we’re putting more resources in front of them about things to do on campus and activities and maps and locations, and maybe things that by the time you’re an upperclassman you’ve memorized…we want to get a lot deeper into that level of personalization,” said Stiller.
Student-driven content could include:
- Communication about campus programs, housing, lifehacks, etc.
- A crowdsourced campus tour to create buzz around campus life
- Updates on event attendance, venue reviews, and voting for favorites
- A classroom supplement for knowledge sharing and enriched learning
Use App Usage Data and Student Feedback to Inform Changes and Updates
The ultimate goal is to make and keep your campus app sticky. Student feedback and app analytics provide needed insights to inform future features and content to help you reach that goal.
Modo Analyze™ delivers real-time analytics and deep insight into what matters most to students. You’ll see how they’re using the app —which modules, screens, and searches are most popular, and any changing trends in their usage. User retention increases dramatically when your app’s evolution is alignment with student expectations.
Use industry-leading tools like Qualtrics for in-app surveys and polls and Modo Communicate™ to send timely push notifications to gather student input for campus initiatives, events, and priorities. Then, combine the results with feedback from smaller student focus groups for robust insights to guide future development plans. Finally, ask students to make recommendations for future designs.
“We have student leadership. We meet with them regularly to ask…How’s it going? What do they want to see? What’s new? What are they hearing from other students?” said Seilhamer. “I’ll also get a couple hundred responses within hours of putting out a survey.”
Are there any AI-driven tools that can help integrate personalized content to enhance student and faculty engagement on campus?
There can be, but the technology alone is not what makes the experience successful.Personalized content works best when institutions understand what students and faculty actually need, what information matters most to them, and how they expect to access it. That is one of the clearest reasons student participation matters in campus app development. Student input helps institutions make smarter decisions about content, navigation, notifications, and priorities before personalization strategies are layered in.
As campuses continue to look for better ways to improve engagement, the goal should not just be adding more features. It should be creating an app experience that feels timely, intuitive, and genuinely useful across the student journey.
When students help shape that experience, institutions are in a much better position to deliver content that is both more relevant and more likely to be used.
Similar to creating a successful product, a successful app requires thoughtful planning and a solid understanding of the wants and needs of the intended audience. Through our work with hundreds of higher ed institutions, we’ve uncovered that the most successful campus apps have engaged students in many areas – from the initial app planning through design and development to content creation and app feedback. With digital engagement platforms like Modo Campus, code-free development tools, delegation and approval workflows, and in-app polls and surveys make it easy to involve students.