At the Next Generation Humanities Conference

Author: Celena Sabillon | Majors: History, African and African American Studies, Political Science| Semester: Fall 2024

Throughout the grant term of 2024, I was able to work alongside other students under the guidance of Dr. Popp and Dr. Hancox to work on developing an app based off of a previous Sharepoint we created. This Sharepoint contained extensive yet condensed information about voter registration, early voting, absentee voting, mail-in ballots, and much more throughout all 50 states and was tailored to young adults for the purpose of educating and encouraging them to vote in an effort to increase voter participation within that demographic.

We began the process of developing the app by surveying students at the University of Arkansas over the completed Sharepoint to collect feedback to determine what improvements could be applied to the app. This feedback consisted of glitches in the site, broken links, interface improvements, confusion when navigating the site, etc. As surveying went on, we applied the feedback to the site and took note of it when applying it to the app. As development of the app went on, we began to meet with organizations around campus to spread the word about the project and how they could be involved with handling it after it was completed. We even ended up holding a voter registration drive with one of these organizations! The drive consisted of students coming by and filling out voter registration forms, using the Sharepoint the team created to answer questions they had about how they should register and/or vote, and completing the survey over the Sharepoint. It was successful at educating students and getting them over the first hurdle in the voting process.

The main hurdle we were not able to get over in this grant term was getting the app published on the app store for students to download and use on their personal devices. While I will not be returning in the next grant term, in the future I’m sure that with more time the team can definitely get the app published with the assistance of the university’s IT department! When that happens, the app will more than likely go under more surveying and editing before it is pushed to the public for use.