Finals= No Sleep+ last minute studying. Sound familiar? As college students, our stress levels are rising as finals week quickly approaches.
However, A Student Government Association-sponsored mobile application meant to serve as a resource to you as you prepare for your finals exam may be available to students at the University of Maryland sooner than you might think.
The SGA is working with the Mobile App Developers (MAD) club, a student group that creates smartphone apps for university students in order to come up with features they felt were most important to students in an app called Finals App UMD.
“It takes a lot of time. We started at the beginning of this semester and are quickly trying to roll out the first version by finals week. There is a lot more that goes on into making an app, beyond the obvious programming aspect,” said MAD president Vinnie Vendemia.
Currently, information about finals week are scattered on various university websites, but the idea for this mobile app is to put all this information in one central place.
The main focus of the mobile app is to help students to stay organized during finals week. It allocates everything we may want to know during finals from places to study, places to eat, how late these places are open, and even when and where finals actually take place.
However, the process to create the mobile app requires more than just computer coding.
MAD needs artists and designers to draw up ‘wireframes’, or prototypes of what the app could look like, and make design decisions of how different pieces of technology will work together before any code is even written.
Monica Zhu, a junior computer science major, said the app will streamline the process of getting the information about when and where finals take place since the app will be aimed specifically toward students.
“It is beneficial because it’s hard to find places to focus or keep track of closing time, it will have all the places information about my own finals, and it can create a checklist about things I need to study for finals,” Zhu said.
Edward Gough, a junior art major, agreed since the simplified process can relieve some stress during finals week.
“It would be a useful application because it augments all this data in one central place. It saves a lot of stress since last year I was worried that the places I would go to study would be closing by the time I got there,” Gough said.
Although LaRae Morris, a junior psychology major, would not download the app she said she sees it being beneficial for some students.
“Honestly an app cannot tell you the best places to do anything. Only you know your life and what you prefer. I’m someone who switches up way too much to get an app like that. I also know my schedule, where I like to study, and everything else since I’ve had two years of practice so it’s unnecessary,” Morris said.
Vendemia said that MAD plans to release the mobile app to students on December 8 on both the iOS and Android platforms before finals week. However, even after the mobile app is released it will continue to be updated.
“Most likely you will see an even better version by next semester,” Vendemia said.