Mobile Web: We’re Already Behind

We’ve been getting lots of activity from our posts on mobile Web.

Mobile Learning:  A Springboard Discussion |  Fear of Mobile Learning |  ML Podcast (iTunes)

It’s something that higher education is already behind in.  The best Web sites have created mobile versions for a group of users growing at an over 100% rate each year.  Look at the big guns:  ESPN, CNN, Yahoo and Google.  Even social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.  There are very few higher education sites with mobile versions.  Try it.  Search for m.harvard.edu.  m.um.edu.  m.berkley.edu.  The best site I can find today is Duke.  Check it out:  m.duke.edu

Traditional Web sites are not going to be cutting the mustard any longer.  The business world moved from HTML to XHTML/CSS, to CMS, and now mobile with custom applications.  Higher education is probably at the XHTML/CSS and/or CMS stage.  Conclusion?  Higher education is behind the curve on this trend.  Unfortunately, the rate that technology grows, we don’t have much time to catch up.

The Experts

Cameron Moll wrote a great book titled, “Mobile Web Design“ that addresses some of the basics.  Brian Fling has also been evangelizing the mobile Web for over five years back when the Motorola Razr was cool.  There are tons of resources from his presentations as well as links from fellow mobile evangelists.  In looking at those sites, the conclusion will be that these developers are not involved in higher education.  True.  They are building for business.  True.  Should I read what they have to say because I work in higher ed?  Yes.  Why?  Because what they are talking about in the business world in real time is happening quicker in higher education than we give credit to.  Case in point:  Do a focus group of ten students on campus.  See what kind of devices they use.  Find out if they have data plans attached to their devices.  You may be surprised at what you find.

The Web is moving at a fantastically quick pace.  We need to keep up.

Migration

Our university has a Jenzabar portal.  We switched from IBM a few years ago.  The portal is fully integrated with our database and systems.  The university has been going through a business process redesign for a number of years to integrate and streamline all services to the portal.  It’s been mildly successful.  Our network and software teams have been working hard to create custom portlets and Web services to serve a number of sub-groups in the institution.  However, one gap in service is the concept of moving the site to mobile devices.

There are a few developers who are building plug-ins and testing for ways to make Jenzabar portals mobile.  But nobody has one working yet that I am aware of.  Wordpress has some developers who have created mobile plugins (Carrington Mobile) and others.  Many sites write a custom CSS file for mobile and print versions.  Higher ed is still catching up with what cutting edge Web developers have known for a few years.  We have to build sites that are standards-compliant with clean validated code.  If higher ed is building these huge monolithic sites, shouldn’t they be accessible to any device?  Not just IE, Firefox, and Safari?  Not just 1024 or 800?

Next Step

I’m going to write next week on higher education’s pattern of innovation (or lack thereof) and how it relates to leadership.  Our PLC had a great discussion on this (which we should have recorded).  I’ll bring some hightlights and ask for your feedback.  But for now, where are your sites?  Do you have mobile versions?  Is there a plan?  Who’s asking the questions?  Post feedback.  Get into the discussion.

Random Resources

• Megan Fisher :: Designing Web Interfaces from Future of Web Design, May 2009  |  Presentation
• Brian Fling :: Mobile Design Blog |  Visit
• W3C ::  Mobile Web Design  |  Download PDF
• Jakob Neilsen :: Mobile Web 2009 = Desktop Web 1998  |  Visit
• Cameron Moll:  Mobile Web Design  |  Visit