New AndrewsStrong App Announced

Mobile app transforms distance education

The Andrews University School of Distance Education has introduced a companion smartphone app to its popular Spirit Strong fitness app, introduced last summer at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in San Antonio, Texas.

“This innovative new app helped combine exercise and fitness—walking in particular—with incredible mission stories that you can listen to while you exercise,” says Janine Lim, who spearheaded the development of the app which was jointly introduced by Adventist World Radio, Novo Tempo and the School of Distance Education.

“In turn, I began to think about how we could deliver distance education to our students literally anytime and anywhere they have extra time,” she says. “Not just while exercising, but also standing in line, walking to the bus stop, during a work break and more,” says Lim.

The result was AndrewsStrong, an app that has redesigned distance education offerings so that students at Andrews and around the world can begin fitting distance education courses into whatever amount of time they have available.

“For example,” says Lim, “do you have a seven-minute walk to the Science Complex? You might be interested in our ‘First Half of the Gettysburg Address’ history course, which is worth .15 credit hours. For the train ride to Chicago, our ‘x+1=y’ math course may help round out the .65 credit you’ve been needing to complete your math requirements.”

Lim agrees that on an individual basis, it may not seem like much credit. However, she points out, “think of all the time you spend watching your kids at the playground, waiting in line for lunch, staring at a TV screen in the gym or sitting in cars. You could theoretically earn almost a semester’s worth of credits very easily, just by using the AndrewsStrong app in all those everyday ‘waiting’ moments.”

The AndrewsStrong app is expected to be released by mid-May and will be available for Android and iOS and, depending on course length, will operate in both WiFi and offline environments.