– either we argue that supporting mobile will lead to better/more effective/more efficient learning/teaching/research

– or we argue that if we don’t support mobile then we are going to lose ‘business’ in some sense (e.g. students are going to choose a.n.other university down the road that does use mobile).

I’m not convinced that we have the evidence to really support either of these arguments right now.

Actually, there’s a third argument… that by supporting mobile we attract new business in some way but, again, I’m not sure we have much evidence for that either.

On the other hand, I don’t think we had evidence back in the mid-90s for supporting the Web, and we went ahead and did it anyway because it was the obvious thing to do (rightly as it turns out).

My worry is that in the current economic climate I’m not sure where the resource for a ‘let’s just do it’ approach comes from? Does that matter?

The facts & figures speak for themselves, I think, when they show the rapidly increasing takeup and proliferation of handheld devices and what they now offer the user. So then, I guess, the questions are around “do we focus on creating apps or concentrate on making our existing web content mobile friendly?”. I think in the latter case, the evidence is already clear – mobile usage is increasing steadily and rapidly, in which case it’s surely a no-brainer for institutions to look to enhance their content and enable it to be accessed in a more usable way on smaller screens, with thought to mobile UI.

Specialist native apps though would, of course, demand other questions like “do our students want it?”, “does the tech fit with the purpose?” and “is there another way to do this?”.