The set of principles known as Future Friendly compels mobile web developers to 1) acknowledge and embrace unpredictability 2) think and behave in a future-friendly way and 3) help others do the same. Dave Olsen of West Virginia University took those principles and applied them to higher ed, painting a picture of the future-friendly campus. And several of these principles tie back to the role of content.
Among the points in Olsen’s “manifesto” is the fact that we are an increasingly networked society, calling for a more “personal, two-way” approach to communications. In addition, content and data need to be free and accessible, whether through APIs or otherwise, in order to be “as useful as possible to our users.” Reading Olsen’s vision, it is clear that the delivery of useful, usable content is a core requirement for a future-friendly campus.
The ways in which our users will want to interact with us, the types of tasks they’ll want to complete, and the types of devices we’ll want to deliver to will just continue to proliferate. Now is the time to reevaluate.
Source: The Future Friendly Campus: A Manifesto by Dave Olsen, Mobile in Higher Ed, Nov. 7, 2011
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