DePaul officially released the iDePaul application for iOS, Android and Blackberry phones Tuesday.
The app was developed by DubLabs, Inc., a company that works with more than 600 schools to develop and distribute school-specific apps that allow students to check campus maps, access important numbers, view event schedules and perform other functions that college students may use on a regular basis.
Bob McCormick, vice president for Information Services, said that the now-released application may change based on feedback from its users.
“We’re tracking the downloads so we can respond to feedback,” said McCormick. “We will be acting on the feedback people leave and working with our vendor to make adjustments.”
He added that they have already received feedback on the app and currently have a four star rating on iTunes with more than 20 reviews.
“We’ve been getting feedback from Facebook, Twitter, the iTunes application store, and we’re pleasantly surprised by how it’s been received,” said McCormick.
Phil De Guzman, a 2008 alum tweeted Thursday, “Just DL’d the new DePaul app. Pretty cool.”
Some students believe that the app may be useful to certain groups of students, but not necessarily the student body as a whole.
“Few of the features are something I would need to access often enough on-the-go that would justify me downloading a native app,” said Mehdi Bichri, sophomore business major. “That being said, I think that it might be useful for newer students or people with limited computer access, but I don’t fall into either of those categories.”
iDePaul allows students to view several parts of D2L for their classes such as class announcements and assignments, but it is missing functionality for grades and content.
“I wish teachers actually added assignments onto D2L or it had grades, but (the app) was actually working,” said Kelsey Schroeder, sophomore public relations major.
There was concern that the app would not work on iPhone 5 phones.
“We just independently verified that the iDePaul app does work on the iPhone 5 – it is not optimized for that platform, but it does work well,” said McCormick.
He added that if students are having problems with the app, they can contact him and he will look into the issue.
While this app may be useful to some students, it is not for everyone.
“I read the description and played around with it on my roommate’s phone and decided that it was useless to me,” said Bichri.