The University of Oklahoma (OU) has installed a network of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons to help students navigate their way around the campus library, as well as exhibits of its Galileo books and manuscripts, located at seven locations within four buildings around the campus.
The solution, which employs beacon-based technology provided by Aruba Networks (a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company), is designed to solve a problem that the large public university had been experiencing: helping new students from small towns learn their way around a large complex building, such as the seven-story Bizzell Memorial Library.
During the past few years, says Chelsea Julian, OU Libraries’ communication coordinator, college administrators had been noticing that new students often walked into the library’s front door, looked around and promptly headed back outside. Since students are engaged with their smartphones most of the time, the university considered how it could provide an app to encourage them to venture through the library and explore its resources, rather than becoming overwhelmed and leaving.
In addition, the campus is home to one of the largest collections of manuscripts and first-edition books written by the Italian Renaissance scientist Galileo. The school has displayed the materials have been on display at seven locations on campus since the fall of 2015, including the natural history museum and art museum.
During the previous academic year, the school—which enrolls 30,000 students—decided that an app that would help new and existing students navigate the library and its Galileo exhibits. With the OU Libraries NavApp, available for Android and iOS devices, individuals can now find their way to the library’s branches, special collections, resources and service desks, coffee shop or Galileo exhibits. The app relies on BLE technology to display a student’s location as a glowing blue dot on an indoor map. If the app deployment goes well at the library, additional functionality could then be added to the app over time, says Matt Cook, the University of Oklahoma’s emerging-technology librarian. In fact, he says, the college is considering a campus-wide app in the long term that would enable navigation and access to content related to most OU locations.
The school’s app uses GPS data to enable navigation outdoors, between buildings. But OU also needed an indoor location technology to help students navigate the library and the three other buildings in which the Galileo exhibit is housed: the National Weather Center, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art and the Sam Noble Natural History Museum.
Aruba released its Meridian Mobile App Platform a year ago, which now also includes its own beacons, as well as sensors to monitor the beacons’ battery life and manage their settings, explains Chris Kozup, Aruba’s VP of marketing. Aruba’s Meridian software offers the technology in two ways to build a location-based app: Organizations can use Meridian software development kits (SDKs) that add location-based features to an existing mobile app, or they can use the Meridian software framework to build an entire cross-platform app from scratch. The university selected the latter option.
OU conducted a proof of concept in spring 2015 at its Collaborative Learning Center, a single floor in the library that was recently renovated. For this pilot, it installed six beacons and provided the app to a few students and staff members who commonly frequented the area. The library opted to expand the deployment during the summer, and the university launched its app this fall.
The college installed 400 Aruba beacons—matchbook-size devices with a battery life of two to three years—throughout Bizzell Memorial Library and the Galileo exhibit areas within the library and the three other buildings. Each beacon transmits a unique identifier that can be received by the Meridian-powered NavApp on phones and tablets within the vicinity. The app retrieves data relevant to that location and can trigger a location-based action, such as pushing a notification or displaying a glowing blue dot on a digital map indicating the phone’s location.
The NavApp enables a student to access information specific to his or her location, such as how to operate equipment within a particular room. It also connects to the Tapingo app, enabling students to place an order with the library’s coffee shop, and then navigate their way to that location to purchase the drink.
When an app user arrives at the library, a beacon installed at the door prompts the app to display a message inviting that individual to view events taking place at the library. The student can then request navigation to specific areas of interest. At the Galileo exhibits, he or she can also receive prompts to view information regarding a manuscript or a tool used by Galileo. If not interested, the student simply swipes that notification away.
The university installed the majority of the beacons themselves, Cook explains. It used Aruba’s Meridian content management system (CMS) to input each beacon’s location and link that data to the beacon’s ID number, by dragging and dropping an icon for that beacon onto a map of the building.
OU is currently in the process of installing 60 Aruba beacon sensors that assist in managing the beacon hardware. The sensors plug into wall sockets and use BLE signals to manage the settings and monitor the status of the 400 beacons. For example, if a beacon is no longer transmitting its ID at regular intervals, the sensor forwards that information to the CMS via a Wi-Fi connection. In this way, employees are spared from periodically having to walk around the campus checking each beacon’s battery function.
Approximately 1,500 students have downloaded the app to date, Cook reports, and he expects to sign up another 1,500 for the app during the next semester. That, he says, will represent about 10 percent of the entire student body. He can view the aggregate analytics data to determine how students are using the app, he notes, and has learned a few things about their interests. According to the collected data, students search not only for specific departments within the library, but also for particular books—and that, Julian says, is something the school is working to provide. The app encourages library users to interact with librarians. For instance, it offers a link to the library’s website, where students can request additional information about specific subjects from librarians, and learn where they should begin searching for a book or other resource.
“We’re really pretty happy with what we’ve seen so far,” Cook states. One of the app users’ most frequent searches, he says, is for the location of the student union building, which is not yet on the system. During a potential third phase, the school plans to deploy the beacons campus-wide; however, that phase has yet to be approved. At a later date, beacons might be deployed in the wider town beyond the campus. How this phase will be deployed is still under discussion.
Aruba reports that the beacons are priced at $75 apiece, while the Aruba Sensors, which are new, cost $195 apiece. Meridian software subscription pricing varies based on the deployment. The company also sells its 320 Series Wi-Fi access points, which come with built-in beacons. The University of Oklahoma has a different Wi-Fi network provider, so it opted for the standalone beacons and the Aruba Sensors to assist with managing them.