Last year with help from The Compass we set out to gather some feedback from students on the apps they would recommend to others to aid study at University. We’ve repeated the event this year to find out in this fast moving market, what’s changed and what has remained popular.
Recent statistics reveal that educational apps are the third most downloaded category in Apple’s app store, dropping just behind Business apps. But what constitutes as an educational app? Often apps that aren’t typically seen as educational can be assistive in University study, so using the speak-board on Penryn campus helped us gain further insight into the apps our students found useful and would recommend to others.
This year, social media and social learning apps feature most prominantely; Facebook to “get involved with events”, Pinterest for social bookmarking and newcomer YikYak which allows you to post updates anonymously and subscribe to feeds from specific geographical locations such as Penryn and Falmouth Campuses at the University.
Referencing tools are again popular, with RefMe appearing for the second year in a row and Mendeley cropping up aswell.
Discipline specific apps such as the Steinway Metronome app get a mention for music students.
Organisational tools such as Wunderlist and LifeRPG appeared this year. With HabitRPG on last years list, the notion of game play in productivity would appear important to students.
Apps that support student wellbeing remain popular, with Rain Rain helping us get to sleep, School Sucks podcasts on remedies for procrastination and Colour Switch to facilitate it!
Thanks again to all who took part in the speak-board, if you’d like any more information about any of the apps mentioned or you’d like to talk about using apps as part of Learning and Teaching at Falmouth University please get in touch – etsupport@falmouth.ac.uk
Here’s the full list of recommended apps from our speak-boards. Please upvote and comment on those that you find useful: