School opened an upgraded version of the cyber campus website on the beginning of this semester and opened a cyber campus mobile application on Sept. 19.
Ewha cyber campus first started in 1998 to overcome the limits of time and space of in-class education with an online lecture. The school attempted to broaden its services globally by uploading lectures on iTunes, YouTube, and K-MOOC lectures and recently opening a mobile application version.
The renewal was made based on a survey conducted last year to receive students’ comments on the directions to improve the website. According to the survey, students inquired the most on developing a mobile application followed by advancing it in terms of communication, making a user-friendly layout, notifying updated announcements, saving class materials and providing students with their time table.
“It was necessary to upgrade the cyber campus website to come up with the mobile application version, which was what most students suggested,” said Chun, the head of the Office of Education Innovation.
Through a systematical upgrade of cyber campus, four main changes were made. Other online services such as global online campus, opened e-learning courses and other academic and nonacademic education systems were all integrated into the website. Users can now open their own e-class to communicate with other classmates for various purposes and can rearrange their classes’ board layout. Finally, students can evaluate each other’s group projects and receive feedbacks on their papers online.
As part of the upgrades, the new mobile application aimed to provide even more advanced services than the PC version.
There had been voices from students that the mobile version of the website had bad connection, making students take the same steps over again. The mobile application guarantees a faster and stable service compared to the previous version. It also provides real-time push notifications, which allows the delivery of information without special requests, communication between users, access to video clips with adjustable speed and auto repeat, a page to keep in track of one’s academic achievements and automatic attendance through verification codes.
“The new mobile application version has a much more stable internet connection than using a mobile version of the website and is much more organized,” said Kwak Onew, a student majoring in English and English Literature. “Being able to communicate with other classmates through cyber campus would also be helpful when working on group projects.”
The school is open to any comments on the new website and mobile application for future adjustments.
“Cyber campus is one of the services that students use the most,” Chun said. “Even though the new cyber campus was checked on numerous times before actually being opened to students, we are always opened to students’ suggestions if there are any inconveniences while using it.”