Utilizing the UH Hilo App

In 2015, a group of students in the Students Activities Council (SAC) approached Campus Center with an initiative to create an app specifically to be used as a navigational tool for University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo (UH Hilo) students. Funded from the combined budgets of the campus’s Chartered Student Organizations (CSOs), the app is now approaching its fifth year since conception and is downloaded by about 3,000 users.

Lai Sha Bugado, Campus Center’s Acting Director, explains the SAC members’s initial motivation for creating the app, which is the first of its kind in the University of Hawaiʻi system. She states, “It was an idea they presented to us because it was something they felt was a way that we could move the campus forward with technology, sustainability in terms of creating less paper fliers, and getting the information out there to the campus using an app.”

Available for free to download on any smartphone or tablet that can access the internet, the aim of the UH Hilo app is to serve as a platform for networking and collaboration between the campus community and as an electronic database for student admissions, academics, and activities. Its features connect key aspects of campus life and include information about upcoming events, groups and clubs, a directory of campus services, the current course schedule, Kilohana tutoring, and virtual tours of the campus.

Users on the UH Hilo app can personalize their profile page and organize their schedule through a calendar feature. Similar to other forms of social media, the app also offers components such as an instant messaging service and a community page used as a forum for student announcements and initiatives.

A perusal of the page’s feed reveals posts about an array of topics like off-campus housing bulletins, requests for research project participants, weather advisories, service closures, and pleas in search of lost pets. One of the app’s most popular features is the buy and sell tag on the community page.

Through the app, users are also able to access links to general information such as hours of operation for campus services and how to get in touch with an academic advisor. Bugado lists the Emergency Response Guide for campus security and the embedded entry into Google maps for easy, electronic navigation around UH Hilo.

Bugado remains the app’s veteran advocate in Campus Center since its genesis and is currently overseeing the creation of a committee comprised of representatives from each of the campus’s CSOs in order to develop it over the next several years. She’s also excited to announce that the app is soon to be adopted by the University of Hawaiʻi Maui College and that students from UH Hilo’s sister campus will be visiting the Big Island to learn more about the app and how it’s utilized.

“What was basically a student initiative, Campus Center carried,” Bugado explains. “I tell all of the student organizations: what kinds of things would you like to leave as your legacy for the campus? This was the legacy that this group left that is now being picked up by the UH system.”

Using funds allocated from the combined budgets of the CSOs, the app’s software was originally purchased for $15,000 per year on a three-year contract with the company OOHLALA and is now administered through the communication platform Ready Education after OOHLALA merged with DubLabs in 2018. Since the merger, the college mobile app company has introduced an assessment feature that was bought for the UH Hilo app at an additional price of $2,500 per year.

According to Bugado, the new assessment feature allows for better data collection to understand how students are using the app. Using instant feedback features such as QR codes, student organizations on campus are able to track how many students attend their events while gaining first-hand experience on progressive technology that will benefit them in the world of post-collegiate careers.

Bugado’s next goal for developing the app is to integrate services like STAR and Laulima in order to allow for seamless access instead of redirecting users through a portal. Since it’s supported by student fees provided to the CSOs, Bugado has not yet asked if UH Hilo’s administration would consider investing in it, but she hopes to get them “on board” with the initiative in order for the campus to profit from the app as a whole.

An efficacy report provided by Ready Education in February 2019 shows that over the 2017-2018 school year, the app was downloaded 3,387 times with 1,463 user registrations, up from 2,291 downloads and 937 user registrations during the previous school year. Bugado anticipates that a CSO committee dedicated to developing the app will help generate innovative ideas to improve students’ incentives for downloading it, keep it contemporary, and explore new ways that the data can be utilized.

Michael Taylor, the president of the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo’s Student Association (UHHSA), states that features such as the QR code have made signing students in for UHHSA’s events much more convenient. Taylor has expressed that he would love to be a part of Bugado’s prospective committee, especially since CSOs like UHHSA are the ones helping to fund it. “I feel like it works well, but it could work better,” Taylor says. “The students who created it aren’t here anymore, but we’re still trying to honor their vision.”