Curious about what’s going on with the Butler App? Let’s fill you in on where we’ve been and where we’re heading.
In May 2016, High Alpha, in partnership with Butler University, created a startup tech company called ClearScholar to develop a student engagement platform for a mobile-first world. Amazingly, in just three months, a pilot program was kicked off and the ‘Founding 100’ students started using this new mobile app in August. Features initially included: a digital student ID, a personalized news feed, an events and classes calendar, and a campus map.
According to Butler CIO, Pete Williams, the partnership between Butler and ClearScholar can be defined as follows: Butler University is the SME (subject matter expert) and ClearScholar is the product developer, marketer and business manager of the company. To date, Butler’s Marketing and Student Affairs departments have lead the charge in advising ClearScholar on higher ed and student needs, revealing what’s important to student engagement and success. ClearScholar takes this input and builds increased functionality into the app. Each has a hand in gathering app requirements and each has a hand in what direction the app takes. This partnership also includes Butler University being an investor in ClearScholar, providing Butler students and staff a strong influence in the application features and being the first to access these newest features. Soon, Butler faculty will be an integral part as well in the developing of the Salesforce Advisor Link product which will seamlessly integrate with the Butler App, amongst other things. Additionally as ClearScholar grows by on boarding other universities, Butler will share in the financial success. These gains would then be able to be put towards additional innovation at Butler.
Over time, the original pilot group was slowly expanded and finally, on the first day of the 2017 spring semester, the Butler App pilot came to a close as it was made available to all students, marking a significant milestone in the on-going work between Butler University and ClearScholar!
As you can imagine, the capabilities of the app have greatly expanded since the start of the pilot. Currently, all students with the app can now utilize improved campus safety tools, input service cases with IT, see their advisor information, be aware of their Dawg Bucks and Flex Dollars balances, interact with polls, and more. To this, one student recently stated, “This has everything I never knew I needed.” These services were conceptualized and developed hand-in-hand with Butler’s Student Advisory Board and ClearScholar, and this relationship will continue to guide the direction of the Butler App. Butler welcomes more input and feedback from all students, staff, and faculty; if you’d like to share, put it in the Comments section below or just email our own Mary Reiman (mreiman@butler.edu) your ideas so we can really knock this app out of the park!
What’s around the corner for the app right now? Presently, ClearScholar’s top priority is working to improve its campus safety features to increase both the students safety and the police officers’ ability to respond quicker and be more prepared. Hopefully, these features won’t be the most used on the app, but will provide the most benefit to all in case they are. Read more about it in ClearScholar’s blog post and learn more of the app’s student safety features.
We’d encourage you to follow ClearScholar’s efforts on this new student engagement platform by reading their blog too or signing up for their newsletter here: https://clearscholar.com/blog/.
The Butler Collegian recently published an article about students’ reactions to the new Butler App, here’s a link: Butler App now available to all students.