Bespoke Mobile Application Development: Facilitating Transition of Foundation Students to Higher Education

Introduction

Foundation Students – comprising International and Access students - have particular needs when they transition to higher education, and International Students in particular experience a range of personal, social and cultural difficulties with this transition (Smith & Khawaja, 2011). In an Irish context, third-level or tertiary level education refers to all education after second-level, encompassing higher education in universities and colleges (Department of Education and Science, 2004). In the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) the authors sought to investigate the benefits of providing Foundation Students with a bespoke mobile application tailored to their particular information needs. A bespoke mobile application is one with functionality that is designed to provide a solution to specific needs or a particular problem (Salz & Moranz, 2013). Development of such a mobile application would generally require substantial financial investment and technological expertise. However, this chapter will focus on a low cost model that requires minimal computer know-how to produce and deploy a mobile application in a matter of weeks. The authors will show how such bespoke mobile apps can be developed using freely available online Integrated Development Environments which facilitate deployment on the dominant Apple (iPhones, iPads) and Android mobile platforms. This chapter with detail the app’s design, development and deployment along with its evaluation with a cohort of Foundation students in the DIT.