ITS Launches Wesleyan Mobile Site

The campus community can browse university information through their smart phones and tablets through a new mobile web site developed by Information Technology Services.

The Wesleyan mobile web site, launched Oct. 25, provides quick links to university news, events, academics, map locations and directory. Mobile device auto detection is built into the Wesleyan home page, so smartphone users (iOS, Android or Blackberry Torch) can view either the full web site or the mobile version on their handheld device.

“A mobile web site is really designed for a broad audience,” says Melissa Datre, director of ITS’s New Media Lab. “Students, staff and faculty will find it useful, but it will also appeal to folks visiting campus who need to access information about the university quickly. The site provides information they would be able to find on the regular web site, but it is shortened and optimized for mobile viewing.”

Smartphone users have the option to navigate to the mobile site directly using http://mobile.wesleyan.edu/ or http://m.wesleyan.edu.

The New Media Lab began developing the mobile site in January by investigating technologies for cross-device deployment and researching internal statistics and other university’s mobile sites. They later conducted research to look at what other universities were doing with mobile technologies, and compiled their own data from Google Analytics.

ITS will continue to develop the mobile website and encourages the campus community to submit comments at medialab@wesleyan.edu. Datre says the next step will be to create mobile applications, or programs, that have a more targeted audience.

“The exciting part is we’ve only just begun with mobile device development and there is a lot more opportunity out there for Wes to go mobile,” Datre says.