MOCS - Mobile Optimized Campus Services
Idea
Inspired by the European Union Open Data Project, we created a generic mobile framework for different use-cases. We defined a standard and licence the implementation of the framework for integration, adaptation and extension. We offer not only a licence to use the whole MOCS framework to individuals or companies that want to create new and better mobile applications, but also offer mentoring, knowledge sharing and other supporting activities to young entrepreneurs using the MOCS framework to create a mobile app for students and universities in their country.
What is MOCS?
MOCS [mɔks] is an established standard for creating mobile apps that integrate university services. It contains a development toolkit and framework that enables the creation of mobile apps for Android and iOS. Moshbit develops the professional framework with focus on high innovation and quality. We support you as MOCS joint-venture partner in the cooperation and the implementation of the MOCS framework and in implementing your business model. Moshbit develops a reference implementation of the framework, to which as licensee you have full access to and can create your own implementation on top of it.
MOCS is as specific as necessary and as modularized as possible. We know what struggles young startups with creating their own high quality app and focusing on marketing and their business. MOCS is designed and developed professionally and passionately. That’s why we created the MOCS framework, so that you can start with a high quality app that has already a multitude of existing modules that can be configured and re-used. The framework is open to contributions and extensions. MOCS is the only mobile campus framework with full extension capabilities, native Android & iOS integration for maximum performance and usability, no need for universities to adapt their data model and with a fully available reference implementation that pushes your business to the next level.
MOCS Architecture
- User centered
- Following latest design standards
- HTTPS/REST communication between modules
- Only encrypted TLS/HTTPS traffic
- MOCS platform can scale on the fly
- Easily adoptable and changeable data definitions
- Reliable backup strategy
- Measurement of application performance
- Homogenous app release pipelines
- High-available
- GDPR compliant
- Privacy preserving technology
- Easy customizable and extendable
- Support for different data sources
MOCS Features
The MOCS project enables the creation of a generic high quality student app for their daily life. As a MOCS partner you can include individualized university systems. The MOCS framework enables the inclusion from any internet-based university service in various standards and services and is flexible to your needs: HTML, XHTML, HTTPS, HTTP GET, HTTP POST, iCal, IMAP, SMTP, XML, JSON, REST, SOAP, XML-RPC, PDF, JavaScript, LocalStorage, RSS, OAuth2, Shibboleth/SAML SSO, CAS, AD, 2FA SSO, Exchange, Moodle and many more.
There is no central data source and no standardized data model, rather MOCS focuses to be inclusive and to dynamically adapt to the already existing data sources the university already has. So integrating the MOCS framework into a new country does not need any effort from the universities itself, but rather from the partner that integrates the MOCS framework in a specific market.
The whole MOCS platform and reference implementation is built with highest security standards. We run a bug bounty program for the whole MOCS platform operation and our reference implementation, do regular security audits and ensure that every new feature is built with security and privacy by design. The whole MOCS framework (MOCS reference implementation and platform hosting) is fully GDPR compliant and proofed by successful joint-venture partners. The MOCS frameworks allows easy scalability to millions of users backed by a high performance architecture.
MOCS focuses on highest quality and design guidelines: We believe that only native apps can deliver that promise. We continually do user surveys to improve our reference implementation and make things simpler and easier accessible. Navigating through your university, connecting to students, setting up your mail client and incorporating ical calendar feeds should all be possible with one click and without technical knowledge.
To ensure a maximal quality, the client apps that use the MOCS framework are written natively in Kotlin and Swift. By using the MOCS framework, all parts of the app are fully customizable and modularized. The university management development developed in Kotlin in a platform independent architecture.
The MOCS framework reference implementation is fully featured and contains a huge amount of out of the box functionality, existing UI modules and architectural components:
- A newsfeed that incorporates various externally and internally sources and is fully configurable per university.
- A university connection module to locally store user-data from universities from different data sources with multi-version and multi-configuration support for university management systems. Many common system-integrations like Moodle can be reused and out of the box supported in various configurations and versions.
- A course overview module, with configurable links to all course information sites of a university.
- A full native calendar to view university course events, create your own private events, get event notifications, hide university events, change the appearance of the calendar and integrate holidays and external iCal-calendars.
- A chat module that can be used to create real-time chats between students and to create a pure mobile forum to enable a knowledge exchange between students of a university.
- A module to integrate existing partner web-apps to create or integrate student job portals, student voucher platforms and more.
- A fully-fledged mobile mail client with IMAP & SMTP support, attachment handling and notification support. It is built with a high focus on simplicity and includes dedicated handling of mail configurations that are commonly used at universities.
- A grades module, where students can view all their grades from their study.
- A study module to view studies and also link multiple studies from different universities into one single app.
- A feedback module to allow an easy connection from your users to you as app provider.
- A referral module to enable continuous user growth.
- A battle-tested login and authentication method with full support for GDPR compliance.
- A bookmarks module to enable user customization of the app.
- A lunch module to view daily lunch offers of restaurants, bookmark restaurants and find them on a map.
- And much more modules that can all be dynamically enabled.
Each module is already used in production and can be configured to your own needs. With the MOCS framework you can extend the existing modules and create completely new modules. The whole MOCS platform and reference implementation is fully localizable to support your local market needs. The MOCS reference implementation is created with accessibility in mind to ensure blind students an optimal user experience within the mobile app.
History of MOCS
The predecessors of MOCS started in October 2014 with a simple Android university app at the Technical University of Graz. To allow cross-platform development we later created the open source project Kotlift. Based on these experiences, the native Android and iOS apps grew into several apps, that now use all the MOCS framework. More than 30 combined work years created a framework that is already used by students on more than 300 universities in multiple countries. The core framework development takes place in the EU in Graz, Austria by skilled Android & iOS developers and state-of-the-art system architects. MOCS can now integrate university services like student lifecycle management, e-learning, calendars, mails and much more. Additionally the MOCS framework provides a way to also integrate additional information for the app users such as lunch menus, news posts, job portals, student voucher platforms and other services.
The MOCS reference implementation with its platform services recently got awarded by the European Commission with the Seal of Excellence.
MOCS Licencing & Contact
The MOCS framework is founded and continuously developed by Moshbit GmbH in Graz, Austria. Together with you as joint-venture partner we enable to create your own high quality university apps within several weeks in your own country or local market.
Moshbit
- Operates, hosts and maintains the MOCS platform and serves as technical infrastructure and solution framework provider.
- Creates a MOCS client app reference implementation and continuously improves and maintains it.
- Provides a reactive process administration backend for feature management, university configuration and in-app-content customization.
- Helps the joint-venture partner with mentoring, knowledge-sharing and accelerates it’s product launch.
- Implements regional adoptions that are needed for the market of the joint-venture.
The MOCS joint-venture partner
- Can use the by Moshbit provided MOCS platform as hoster.
- Can build his own client app based on the reference implementation for a faster app development or re-use and extend the existing MOCS reference implementation client.
- Has a vote on new future features of the MOCS reference implementation and the MOCS platform.
- Can request from Moshbit to implement new features in the MOCS reference implementation or in the MOCS platform.
- Can implement features and functionality far beyond the capabilities of the reference implementation.
- Can integrate existing platform features into the MOCS platform.
- Can build new platform features and integrate those features into the MOCS platform.
The MOCS framework can be licenced and exclusively licenced for a specific market. Your application that uses the MOCS framework can either use existing brands of the MOCS reference implementation or can use the MOCS reference implementation as white label solution.
You want to become a joint-venture partner company that delivers by using the MOCS framework a high quality app to students in your country? You want to create a business around this app in your market? Then please contact us and send us your pitch-deck and a written summary of your business plan to mocs@moshbit.com. Creating a student app with the MOCS framework needs only platform independent university integration developers. For a quick product launch you can use our reference implementation as native app. By using the MOCS framework, your development will be drastically accelerated which enables you as MOCS joint-venture partner to focus primary on marketing, university/partner cooperation management and business development.