But now, for students and professors alike, Patrick Cosgrove has introduced an app called Pocket Points to help keep students engaged in the classroom.
According to Cosgrove, a sophomore at IU, a group of students at Chico State University in California developed the app last year when they noticed their classmates often seemed distracted.
The app initially launched at Chico State, but it is now available to students at more than 150 schools across the country.
This past summer, the developers of the app contacted Cosgrove about bringing the app to IU. Now in its seventh week at IU, more than four thousand University students — roughly 12 percent of the student body — have downloaded the app.
The premise of the app is simple. All students have to do is open it once they’re in class, lock their phones and they’ll start earning points, Cosgrove said.
Students will earn one point for every 30 minutes their phone is locked. Students will then be able to redeem these points at various restaurants and stores for free items or discounts.
“It keeps students off their phones because as long as (their phones) are locked, they’re earning points, but if they’re unlocked, they don’t earn any points,” Cosgrove said.
In addition to Qdoba, Baked and Kilroy’s, Pocket Points is cooperating with seven other local businesses, including the Bloomington Sandwich Company and Brothers Bar and Grill.
There are also about 40 to 50 online websites where students can redeem the points they’ve earned, Cosgrove said.
“The app provides a good advertising opportunity for businesses, which is why many local companies have gotten involved,” Cosgrove said.
Cosgrove said he spent a lot of time this summer preparing for the app’s launch.
He talked to various businesses, inviting them to participate.
He also mapped all of IU’s classrooms into the app to ensure students could only earn points while in class.
Cosgrove said he believes Pocket Points has been largely successful, not only in keeping students off their phones, but also in increasing the number of purchases at local businesses.
“There was a study on the Qdoba at Penn State that was participating, and they found that Qdoba had a 98-percent increase in new customers and that four out of five times someone used Pocket Points they brought a friend who didn’t use Pocket Points but paid full price for something,” Cosgrove said.
Ben Bonahoom, a freshman at IU and a Pocket Points user, said the app is beneficial to both students and local businesses.
“I really think that Pocket Points is a novel idea,” Bonahoom said. “Not only does it give me a great incentive to have my phone locked, but it also provides and promotes for businesses in Bloomington. That, to me, is the biggest thing, the sort of local bond that is formed.”
