Unicircle | Blog

Disruptive digital technologies have become second-nature to younger generations. A college freshman was around 5 years old when the first Apple iPhone was released, information at the palm of their hands has existed for almost their entire lives. A huge number of 18-year-olds now own a smartphone, Mobile phones have become an integral part of everyday life, especially for college students. Today's students expect that they can access important systems and information via mobile devices. It's how they deal with the world.

Portals are designed to protect information. Students can use it for multiple purposes. They provide multiple resources and services. It can be through email, a discussion board, a knowledge base, a search engine, external links, or other means.

Student Portal: Benefits

Along with contributing to academia, it can also support management with various tasks. To name a few, we reach out to students & workers, meet institutional objectives, and serve the general community. Let's dive in. Portals offer many benefits to students, such as:

There is an easy user interface with all course information at your fingertips.
Faculty can be reached immediately.
Grades, class schedules, and tuition fees are easily accessible.
There are additional activities available for students, such as sports, community service projects, and special projects.
A wide range of options and scope.
Student service that is tailored to the student's needs.

A Quality App Is Needed

Through their phone, students check their bank accounts, make dinner reservations, call a ride, watch videos, check concert tickets and get boarding passes. All these things are done on their phones, so why should their student portal be different? Student engagement will often dwindle if they cannot meet this expectation.

Rather than relying on the fact that an app exists, students tend not to use it. They need the app to provide them with all the information and functionality they need. The app should be visually appealing and easy to use (just like a consumer app).

For student portal engagement to be high, institutions need to reach out wherever their students are. It means offering a mobile and web portal experience that students will find useful.

An Effective User Experience is Must

For a student portal to be successful, it must offer a seamless experience across devices. Both the mobile and web portal must provide the same features, information, tools and capabilities for three reasons:

It's not useful if students aren't engaged. No matter what device they are using, they expect the same access.
You may not be able to provide all the information and resources you need to some students if you offer a pared-down mobile app.
A mobile app is an excellent tool for students even if they have easy computer access - especially when traveling.

Many schools launch separate mobile apps unrelated to their students' portals. You can also opt for a mobile-optimized website or a skeleton version of the site. Often, this approach is unsuccessful and doesn't align with what students want, need, or expect.

Use of portal for Faculty & Staff

A student portal is not just beneficial for students, but also for staff and faculty alike.

Live interaction with students.
An easy way to manage courses with simplified tools.
Students have access to an instant knowledge base.
The solution is to get all the information about their employment in one place.
Students' portal can be used in day-to-day life by the community. As well as answering questions for the general public, portals can also resolve their doubts.

Computers Are Not Enough

There is a tendency to assume that all students have access to a computer, whether they have one at home or in a campus computer lab. The fact is that 40 percent of students have difficulty using computers.

While campus closings may have exacerbated the problem in 2020, part-time and remote learners may still experience difficulties accessing on-campus computers during operating hours, even when the university is open for business.

All students have access to the same features, information, and tools through the student portal mobile app via the traditional web portal. It could be their only means of accessing community and assistance in many cases.

There is no question that universities need to provide students with options and make it easy for them to participate from various devices. It's not realistic to expect students to be able to use their phones or computers exclusively.

Guidelines for Student Portals

The key to creating a great student experience and making IT management easier has a student portal that spans web and mobile.

Provide a single management platform for the portal

Mobile and web portals allow you to access information regardless of your device. Mobile and web apps will rarely align if the management platforms are different, creating a frustrating user experience. As a result, anyone involved in creating, updating, or managing the platform has twice as much work. If you want to manage everything from one portal, find one that natively optimizes it and pushes it out to all devices, so you don't need to worry about it.

Provide a native mobile app

Mobile browsers aren't adequate for mobile portals. An average adult in India spends 4.7 hours a day using their mobile device. Native mobile apps are responsible for nearly 80% of that time.In addition to mobile push notifications for enhanced communication, native mobile apps offer students mobile interaction features that they're used to. Even if a web portal is optimized for mobile, it will never perform well as a native app or offer the same functionality.

Device-specific portal interfaces are required.

An app can't simply be plugged into your web portal interface to transform it into a native mobile app. It can be very problematic since students use apps very often. Students will abandon apps that are difficult to use, confusing or ugly. A sleek, intuitive mobile interface that isn't over cluttered is what your students expect. Moreover, working with a web portal naturally gives you more space to work with, and, on a computer screen, a mobile-inspired UI wouldn't make sense. Even though the information you present will be the same, how it is presented should be tailored to suit each device. Take a look at consumer apps (like Facebook or Spotify) commonly used on both desktop and mobile platforms. All their features are identical, but their design varies by device for a better user experience.

Keeping Up With Students

Keeping up with student needs and wants is a constant concern for universities. They have to do so as long as they want to stay relevant, keep student satisfaction high, and attract new potential students.

Finding the right balance between technology and student demands is a critical part of that process. In today's higher education institutions, a student portal that offers both a web and a mobile option is essential.