What A Next Generation App Looks Like & What it Takes to Build One

Panel Moderator: Stewart Elliot, CEO, Modo
Panel Speakers: Leonard DeBotton & Robert Torres of Berkeley College, David Johnson & Robert Birkline of University of Houston, and John Hermes & Luke Hartman of Oklahoma Christian University

Berkeley College
To be successful and streamline the process of updating content, next gen apps must leverage the power of a unified Mobile and Desktop experience. Berkeley College's student-driven “Engage” portal does just that with the use of both mobile and desktop. Coupled with the power of a Single-Sign-On experience, the Engage Portal utilizes custom Persona’s, XModules and XComponents to deliver a personalized experience for each one of our users. This allows us to provide curated content for students, staff, faculty, and alumni.

Berkeley College’s mission is to empower students to achieve lifelong success in dynamic careers. With the power of XModule, we are able to provide the tools for students to be successful both in and out of the classroom. “My Advisor and My Counselor” modules were created to aid in communication and offer a personalized experience by showing students a photo of their advisor and multiple methods of reaching out to them (phone, email and via Microsoft Bookings). Driven by student feedback and developed by a committee of leaders ranging from Students Success, Student Development and Campus Life to Information Systems, Berkeley College has achieved a full “buy-in” from all members of our community. Our presentation will focus on the journey to provide the very best in mobile and desktop design.


University of Houston
Generation Z engages with the world through their mobile phone. The University of Houston seeks to develop a comprehensive mobile application that consolidates most UH services into a single app, using data-driven, dynamic content to deliver just-in-time services to students. The app will offer a seamless, single-sign-on with biometric authentication into the rest of UH’s mobile ecosystem. The essential “UH Go” app will become the portal and primary communications platform for two-way communication giving students the support they need when they need it. The key success factor is the partnership between UIT and UH Marketing and Communications. UH Marketing, the mobile app Business Owner, empowered by a clear vision from senior leadership and community buy-in, focuses on the app design and engaging with campus departments and stakeholders to identify in-demand services UIT, the Service Manager, provides the technical solutions to ensure integration into UH Go. This presentation will show how UH is using data-driven content from XComponents to personalize the UH Go app for students.


Oklahoma Christian University
Oklahoma Christian University (OC) launched its first student online portal in 2001. Since that time OC has continued to develop and provide students, faculty and staff with a comprehensive single application, consolidating online services and access. In 2008 OC launched a mobile IOS app to compliment the desktop web application with many of the same online services. As the use of mobile apps continued to grow in popularity and other platforms came to market it became difficult to manage and develop a consistent user experience. OC was introduced to Kurogo in 2013 and soon leveraged the platform to combine the desktop portal experience and mobile platform. Kurogo allowed OC to consolidate the desktop and mobile development and provide similar services no matter which device the constituent was using. In 2017 OC began working with Modo to leverage XModule. In this session we will share how OC integrated our custom web services to create a highly personalized mobile and desktop experience for students, faculty, staff and alumni.