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Ara student app usage continues to grow

20 August, 2019

Ara Institute of Canterbury launched a new student app, called MyAra, in January this year and the uptake from students has been extremely positive.

Tony Gray, Ara’s Chief Executive, said he is very happy with the development.

“We wanted to make it easier for our students to access the systems and learning support information they use day to day. MyAra was the solution to have an easy to use tool that provides access to everything a student needs in one place. It is accessible either by a website or a downloadable mobile app,” said Gray.

Ara student app usage continues to grow.png
This is what MyAra looks on a desktop. It's an easy to use tool for Ara students and staff.

Ara worked with Collabco, a UK-based education solutions provider, to develop MyAra on Collabco’s myday platform.

Myday has proved to be an excellent platform for the needs of our students and Ara has deployed the app in ways that Collabco’s other clients haven’t. Collabco are now using MyAra as a showcase of how myday can be used.

Since the start of the year MyAra has attracted over 11,000 users, with up to 2,000 accessing it every day, each averaging 3.5 sessions per day.

Ara’s student computers default to MyAra which has aided its use and strong promotion has seen an increasing use on mobile devices. Approximately 60% of sessions are via the MyAra app on mobile devices and its use continues to rise.

MyAra is also used by Ara staff with the latest release providing a separate dashboard (home page) for staff users.

Gray is praising the features that MyAra offers such as the ability to customise the experience for groups of users.

“We are now beginning to deploy features for distinct groups. The first has been to create a separate staff dashboard.

“In addition to the customisation, MyAra also has the ability to target notifications to groups of users. For example, if needed, we can send separate notifications to students at different campuses or in different departments where the relevance of the message can be tailored to that user audience.”

Tim Kerr, Ara’s Marketing Manager, has been very pleased with the increasing usage of MyAra and the level of engagement with users.

“We involved students in the testing and development of MyAra from the very beginning, and credit this to its rapid adoption by users. The latest update incorporates enhancements based on user feedback and we will continue to involve users in future development.”