In 2009, UCF doctoral candidate David Rogers formed Allogy Interactive, a company housed in the UCF Business Incubator. Ever since, he has been hard at work creating mobile apps with a group of fellow students majoring in different fields.
Rogers recently teamed up with Dr. Jonathan Kibble, an associate professor of physiology at the UCF College of Medicine. The result – the Renal Physiology app.
Available for iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, the Renal Physiology app is an interactive journey that aims to help students understand how the kidneys work. It is the first in a series of apps about physiology. The app is an enhanced version of part of a medical physiology textbook written by Kibble.
“I wanted learners to enjoy more independence and interaction with the materials they are trying to master,” Kibble said. “This app helps them do that.”
Constructed around a coaching program, the app takes students through a customized learning program with a study timeline. Students can set their test dates, and the app guides them to study at a pace that will help them effectively prepare for a test. The app also features interactive diagrams, quizzes and flashcards.
It costs $9.99 through Apple’s App Store and includes the renal material from Kibble’s textbook. Many colleges are looking to bundle apps with traditional and fully digital textbooks for their students.
Rogers, who is a research associate at UCF’s Institute for Simulation and Training, hopes this technology can eventually help make medical education more affordable to students around the world. As part of his dissertation, Rogers developed a mobile learning platform for emerging markets that has already sold licenses for 50,000 students across East Africa.
In the future, he expects Allogy will produce apps that will aid other areas, such as entrepreneurship and humanitarian or disaster-response missions.
“Our approach is to first understand the relationships within a community and then develop software architectures that connect people to promote learning, opportunity and economic growth,” Rogers said.
Allogy already has produced other applications for corporations, nonprofit agencies and government offices.