In a current webinar, we interviewed Cloud County Group School’s Marc Malone (Affiliate VP of Planning and Evaluation) and Southern Maine Group School’s Jason Saucier (Director of Campus Life) to learn how they’re leveraging their campus app to unify communication, observe information, and help with outreach.
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Query: What have been a number of the largest challenges that your campuses have been dealing with previous to adopting the app?
Marc Malone: Earlier than adopting the app, Cloud was seeing declining enrollment (persistence, retention), and declining monetary assets (enrollment, state funding). We additionally had hassle speaking with college students (billing, assembly and occasion attendance, golf equipment/teams), scholar engagement, and self-efficacy.
Jason Saucier: Three of the primary challenges we have been seeking to overcome have been declining enrollment, lack of efficient communication with college students, and low scholar engagement.
Q: Jason, are you able to give us an instance of this?
J: The campus e mail is the official communication channel; nevertheless, it’s not unusual that college students miss vital emails. We had a bumpy begins to our fall this 12 months once we needed to shut considered one of our residence halls every week earlier than opening because of some services points, so we needed to put 300 college students into motels. We had deliberate a day to maneuver these college students again to campus; we despatched e mail after e mail, we put flyers underneath their doorways, we had flyers within the resort foyer, and we nonetheless discovered college students posting on the app “when is transferring day?” Fortunately at that time we already had the app and have been capable of submit all of the related data on the campus wall.
Q: How did you justify the buying of a campus app?
M: In September 2017 we had an strategic planning assembly the place admins throughout campus got an avenue to specific their opinions. One of many predominant points that we determined we wished to focus our consideration on was growing scholar engagement, which included growing participation in occasions, golf equipment, organizations, and co-curricular occasions.
Q: How did you achieve significant adoption of the app?
M: Tying the app to a bigger challenge was key in selling adoption. As soon as everybody was aligned in that we wished to extend scholar engagement on campus as a part of our strategic plan, and that the app was going to be the avenue to take action, it grew to become simple to advertise. It additionally made it simpler for us to prioritize monetary assets to fund it, since a number of departments would profit from the app.
J: We see half of all downloads and registrations occur through the summer season months, from Might to late August. We market the app on our webpage, scholar portal, all the welcome-week materials that will get despatched out to college students, and our summer season registration conferences that occur all through the summer season. I believe it is because college students look to make connections earlier than they arrive on campus. Additionally if they’ve questions, they flip to the campus wall.
Q: How are on-campus departments utilizing the app to interact with college students?
M: A lot of our departments are leveraging the app to interact and talk with college students. For instance, the tutoring middle makes use of the app to speak issues on brief discover like “hey, the maths teacher has stopped by and he’s going to be right here for 2 hours” or “we have now a particular examine evening for algebra midterms.” They’re additionally utilizing it to trace engagement. When college students are available in, they should check-in, which permits us to gather information on whether or not the coed is coming in for testing, quiet examine time, or assembly with a tutor. Every particular person tutor has their very own QR code which permits us to see which tutor has the very best ranking, in addition to collect scholar suggestions. That is actually worthwhile for directors as a result of it permits us to see how we are able to enhance this service, and permits tutors to find what college students are discovering notably useful.
J: Each week we assign somebody from our 4 particular person staff to observe the app and interact with college students. We have now a schedule the place we determine what we wish to promote throughout which period all year long. Attempting to be conscious that it isn’t staff-heavy, as a result of it’s a place for college students, however it’s been useful for our employees to incorporate speaking factors on the app.
Group School Information
- The general three-year completion charge for group faculty college students nationwide was 24% for the 2000 cohort and 20% for the 2010 cohort.
- Low-income college students are overrepresented in group faculties
- Group faculties are given comparatively few assets
Era-Z Information
- Era of “entry”
- 97% smartphone penetration amongst 18-24 12 months olds
- Common each day time on cellular: 4.2 hrs
- Cell accounts for 52% of time spent on-line
- 61% would favor to be entrepreneurs fairly than workers after faculty
- Keen to offer suggestions – they’ll inform you when one thing isn’t working
We’d prefer to thank each Marc Malone and Jason Saucier for his or her time and suggestions. Should you suppose your campus may profit from an app, or in case you have any questions, be happy to attain out!
