Students are now greeted with a mobile friendly version of the site
David Verghese
davergh1@umbc.edu
Contributing Writer
Summary: UMBC is embracing mobile, and to start whenever you visit my.umbc.com on your phone you are now greeted with an optimized page for your phone rather than the full desktop site.
There will be less pinching and zooming in for UMBC students as MyUMBC has a new mobile version. For those who are unfamiliar with the site, it is the central hub to everything UMBC has to offer. From there, students can access Blackboard as well as their mail accounts and other areas.
Accessing the new mobile site is optimized for Safari on iOS 7 and Chrome for Android. When students pull up the site, they are greeted with a huge scrollable panel that lets them view the recent events and updates happening around UMBC. Scrolling further down students can see both news and events as well as discussions.
One downside is the community media section. When accessing the page, the video failed to load and the site reverted back to the desktop version. Some other quirks on the first page also include some thumbnails not loading in correctly.
Logging onto the mobile site also brings up any groups a student would be involved with. The site provides quick access to Box and Google Drive as well as alerts by tapping your profile icon in the upper right corner of the screen. It is important to note that the alerts section will not bring up a mobile version of the site.
A quick tap in the upper left corner of the screen brings in a side panel for more options. From here, students can view their classes and grades which brings up another key feature: downloading a class schedule. After selecting a specific semester, students can download their entire schedule and integrate it directly with a mobile calendar app.
The site also features a class search list, allowing students to quickly look through various subjects and their sections. The site provides a full rundown of details, including whether it is open or closed and how many students are on the waitlist. There is also a quick link to the bookstore which goes to their mobile site.
Another impressive feature is the ability to drop and add classes from the mobile site. Rather than adding one class at a time, students are able to add multiple classes to their carts just like they would in the desktop version of the site. In case of something else specific, there is a built-in search bar on the site as well.
At any time, users may also switch back to the desktop site by tapping the icon in the upper right corner, then the “Desktop Site” text at the bottom.
Promotion of the mobile site is very limited. Josh Standiford, a Senior studying Computer Engineering said “I didn’t even know it was a thing, but it’s good we have it now. If UMBC truly wants to engage its students on the new mobile site, they need to do a better job telling them about it, or better yet making an actual application to download from both the iOS and Android app store.”
