Mastering Mobile Apps: 9 Classes For IT Pros
These online courses can help IT professionals create enterprise apps and learn critical skills to enhance their careers in a mobile world.
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The face of productivity is changing as the mobile market booms and PC sales continue to lag. Businesses hoping to stay competitive must provide employees with tools they need to stay productive on the go.
Creating enterprise-friendly mobile apps is essential for modern organizations. Earlier this year, Gartner research indicated the demand for enterprise mobile apps will grow five times faster than the ability of internal IT organizations to deliver them.
"We're seeing demand for mobile apps outstrip available development capacity, making quick creation of apps even more challenging," said Gartner principal research analyst Adrian Leow in a statement. "Mobile strategists must use tools and techniques that match the increase in mobile app needs within their organizations."
Gartner reports modern employees use an average of three digital devices in their daily routines. This number will grow to reach five or six as wearable technology and devices connected to the Internet of Things enter the mainstream.
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Most modern employees have at least one mobile device they use for on-the-go productivity, and many have the freedom to choose their devices and apps. This puts significant pressure on IT departments to create and deliver a large variety of mobile apps in a short timeframe.
In order to meet employee demands, IT organizations will need to evaluate users' needs for app features, learn how to improve user experience, and collaborate to deliver apps in a shorter period of time.
Mobile app development skills are invaluable in the enterprise, and will continue to be for years to come. Having a mobile development background can help boost your productivity, and your organization's as you help build and improve apps employees need to do their work.
If you're looking to broaden your mobile development skill set, consider taking an online course or pursuing a certification to gain new knowledge in designing, building, and deploying mobile apps. Here we share a few classes that may be of interest.
Have you taken an online course in mobile development or plan to do so? What was your experience like? Tell us about it in the comments section below.
Android Fundamentals, available through online education provider Udacity, is an introductory course for Android app development. It's intended to teach developers how to build and enhance Android apps, and show best practices for mobile development.
Google Developer Advocates Katherine Kuan, Reto Meier and Dan Galpin lead the 10-week course, which requires about six hours of work per week. Students learn the tools and patterns involved in Android development, the process of building a cloud-connected Android app, and how to navigate the challenges of mobile development. They'll also learn the principles behind strong Android user experience and ways to apply this knowledge to their individual projects.
The course is designed for students who have at least one year of programming experience but want to develop mobile development skills, specifically for Android. It's free for students to download and view course materials and videos, but a $200 monthly fee is required for the full educational experience, including projects with reviews, help from coaches, and a verified certificate upon completion of the class.
Even if you don't program specifically for Android, a course like this could prove useful in educating professionals about user experience and how to face the challenges of mobile app development.
Once you have developed and deployed an app, you'll want to know how people are using it. Android developers can learn to record and evaluate this information through a class called Google Play Services: Analytics, which is available through Udacity.
This course teaches students how to add code to their mobile app to send usage data to Google Analytics, how to use Tag Manager to send updated information to your app without redeploying code, and how to manage your Google Analytics tags.
As a result, students who complete the course will be able to gather information like how people navigate the app and which activities they are using most. This data is invaluable for improving the app's user experience and adding new features.
It's recommended students have prior experience in developing Android apps before taking this course, which lasts approximately two weeks and requires six hours of work per week. It's free to take and includes instructor videos and exercises.
This iOS-focused course is from the University of California, Irvine, and available through online education provider Coursera. It's intended to teach students to build iOS apps so they can receive push notifications and securely interact with Web services.
The four-week class is structured in a series of code tutorials with occasional discussion of concepts at a higher level. Topics include the fundamentals of Web API security, securely storing user data in Core Data, and deploying applications.
This course is available for free on its own or as part of a specialization called iOS Development for Creative Entrepreneurs, which consists of six classes. It teaches the basics of iOS app development. Students create apps and build knowledge of Objective-C, UIKit, and SpriteKit UI concepts. They also learn to use networking, security, location, video, audio, and sensor frameworks.
This mobile development course is intended for developers who want to learn design techniques that will help them build better apps, specifically for Android.
The goal for students in the six-week course is to learn the techniques that designers use in planning and prototyping apps before writing code. This class is not meant to turn students into designers; rather, it's meant to help them better incorporate design into their apps.
Students learn about user experience at a high level and ways to break down complex apps into simple steps. They learn the importance of user-centric design, user research techniques, and how to make well-informed design decisions.
While this course focuses on Android app development, the importance of strong user experience is relevant to every platform. Regardless of whether you develop for Android or not, it's worth learning the principles of well-designed apps. Such information can help you create visually appealing tools or alter existing apps so they appeal to your target users.
Students in this course, available through Udacity, learn to conceptualize and build both Web and mobile apps, and host them in the cloud. The class lasts one month and requires about six hours of work per week.
The goal of this class is to provide fundamental skills for building business apps. Students learn to think about problems in an abstract sense, map out a data model, create data visualizations, and automate manual processes. Over the duration of the course they learn how to build apps with Force.com, which is part of the Salesforce platform.
This course could be valuable for professionals new to app development, or those who want to approach app development in a more business-minded way. Topics like mobile UI customization, communicating complex data, and automating manual tasks are all addressed in the class.
Information Design, created by the University of California, San Diego, and available through Coursera, instructs students on the core principles of visual design so they can better organize and convey information.
Topics covered during the three-week course include information architecture, typography, layout, and color. Students learn the key issues that arise when handling new devices, such as mobile and responsive interfaces, and how to apply design principles to various form factors.
This is the sixth of eight courses included in the Interaction Design Specialization, which is a series of classes that provide a comprehensive education on design technologies. Students learn how to brainstorm and prototype design ideas, and how to use prototypes for getting feedback from teammates and users.
This class, available through Udacity, teaches students to build networking into apps for the purpose of accessing. It's assumed students have iOS experience prior to starting the course. If you don't have any, start out with an introductory iOS development class.
During the three-month course, students will learn concepts core to network communication including HTTP, JSON, and authentication. These concepts may also be applied to other platforms, apps and languages, and they will help students better understand app design. At the end of the course, students build an app that lets them share projects and information with fellow participants.
This mobile development class was created to help Web developers transform traditional desktop Web apps into mobile-friendly experiences. Students learn to build mobile Web apps that will work across iOS, Android, and other mobile platforms.
Over the course of six weeks, students learn how to build Web experiences that adapt to the varying sizes and capabilities of smartphones. This involves programming touch interaction, ways to use APIs, and ensuring Web experiences continue to work well when network conditions are subpar. Students will also build a stronger understanding of mobile networking and learn how to research mobile app performance.
This course, from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, teaches students how to use their Web development skills to create multiplatform mobile apps. It will be available on Coursera in December 2015.
Students will learn how to use the Cordova hybrid app framework to target multiple app platforms with a single codebase; develop using HTML5, CSS, Javascript, and AngularJS skills; and use the Ionic framework to build hybrid mobile apps.
This is the fourth class in the six-course Full Stack Web Development Specialization. Those looking for a more comprehensive Web development education can start with the first course and work their way through the capstone.
This course, from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, teaches students how to use their Web development skills to create multiplatform mobile apps. It will be available on Coursera in December 2015.
Students will learn how to use the Cordova hybrid app framework to target multiple app platforms with a single codebase; develop using HTML5, CSS, Javascript, and AngularJS skills; and use the Ionic framework to build hybrid mobile apps.
This is the fourth class in the six-course Full Stack Web Development Specialization. Those looking for a more comprehensive Web development education can start with the first course and work their way through the capstone.
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