By Issy Cochran, DLINQ Lead Intern/Peer Mentor

Introduction

For my personal Inquiry, MiddMobile, I chose to explore how we have used the Middlebury Mobile App in the past, and ask if there are ways in which we can improve it. As a rising senior feb at Middlebury College with a younger sister about to enter the school as a freshman ‘25, I reflected on my experience at Middlebury so far. I realized that there was a lack of services the Middlebury Mobile App provided that could serve every member of the community everyday. This led me to my idea for this personal inquiry, in which I spent my time learning about and finding ways to improve Middlebury’s app. I did this by researching existing college mobile apps and having a discussion with the Communications and Marketing Department and the Director for Student Activities to learn more about the previous app. Part of my inquiry included learning how to create a WordPress site, using Middcreate, where I documented my findings and ideas.

Guide to Exploring my Site

The site includes three main sections: Stories, Research and Survey. The “Stories” page is documentation of my summer work in chronological order. It is where I discuss conversations I have had and include my next steps at different stages of the inquiry. The “Research” section includes all of my ideas I have thought of after looking at other college Mobile Apps and considering features that would be helpful for the Middlebury Community specifically. This page explains what each feature is and provides evidence for why the feature would be an asset to add to the app. I plan on adding to this page a discussion of the results of the survey I have in the Survey section. On the “Survey” page, I have a basic survey to collect data from fellow peers about which ideas they like best and why in order to see what features the student body thinks would be useful to have. This section is a work and progress, and I hope to gather results and update the website in the future. 

Reflections

Overall, completing this personal inquiry was a great learning experience and taught me that things do not always go as planned, so you need to be flexible. I learned more about the things our school does not yet offer to our students and I hope that the work I did this summer does not go to waste. I would love to, at some point, help the school if they have the time and resources to implement some of the ideas I looked into. I enjoyed the experience of completing my personal inquiry and regardless of what happens with my research I am glad to have spent some time thinking about app development as a possible career option in my future.

Feature photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash