Collin College Mobile app for Android and iOS, build Chatbot using Microsoft’s Q&A maker Case Study | ENO8 Digital Innovation Lab based in Dallas Fort Worth Texas

Client snapshot

Since offering its first classes at area high schools in 1985, Collin College has expanded to serve more than 60,000 credit and continuing education students each year.

Collin College is the only public college based in Collin County and offers more than 100 degrees and certificates in a wide range of disciplines.

With eight current campuses — expanding to 12 in the near future — Collin College serves students across McKinney, Plano, Frisco, Allen and Rockwall, TX with additional expansion to include Celina, Farmersville and Wylie by Fall of 2021.

Collin College previously had a skinned, white-label app; they wanted to build a superior product and user experience for its students from the ground up.

Industry: Education
Services: Development, Testing, Maintenance
Platform: Android & iOS

NATURE OF ENGAGEMENT

Strategic counselor

Change management

Digital transformation

Project rebuild

App development

Architecture design

CAPABILITIES EXHIBITED

Native iOS App

Native Android App

Swift

Kotlin

API creation

Banner integration

Microsoft Q&A Maker

Chatbot

Post-release support

Versioning

The challenge

Prior to ENO8, Collin College had an off-the-shelf, white label mobile app with minimal modification or customizations. That app had limited functionality, poor user experience and worse adoption.

Collin College’s Dean of Strategic Initiatives, had a vision for creating a mobile app sporting a terrific user experience that served up significantly more of the functionality his student body would actually value.

Collin College needed a partner from the strategic consulting and architecture design stages up through development, testing, release, support and versioning for a brand new, reimagined Collin College mobile app.

Much of the back-end dependencies relied on legacy systems; a large part of this project was creating ways to get requisite data out of these other systems (most of which didn’t have accessible options available for us to tap into). There were few, if any, baked out APIs, and even if data was “accessible”, it didn’t actually deliver clear access to the necessary data.

The solution

ENO8 developed a slick, intuitive, comprehensive mobile app experience for Collin College’s students, on both iOS and Android phones. We developed the APIs necessary for the app to query the legacy backend systems and deliver the information students actually desired and/or needed.

Students will often have classes on different campuses, even on the same day; the app dashboard would show a personalized view of where the student’s classes were as well as estimated drive time between them. Taking it a step further, the app would also show estimated parking time at the destination (which was fed by crowdsourcing the students, much like Waze does for driving).

ENO8 also developed a Chatbot which utilized Microsoft’s Q&A maker, trained the machine learning algorithm specific for Collin College, and released a chatbot that could answer students’ FAQs without requiring a touch point between students and the administration.

Finally, the app integrated all the most requested features for college students: paying for classes, viewing their grades, the ability to “get in line” virtually to see advisors, access financial aid information, make appointments, etc.

The impact

Collin College put this project out for a public RFP bid process, which ENO8 won. Working hand in hand with the Innovation office, we were able to take their vision for a comprehensive, beautiful, useful app for their students and turn that vision into a reality. The leaps-and-bounds improvement over the off-the-shelf, limited functionality, non-existent user base, legacy app was a complete 180° for Collin College. The new app is an integral part of their student body’s lived experience at college — a win for all parties.