Campus Engagement Tip: Creating Digital Solutions for Student Participation

College campuses, at their best, are hubs for students to connect with peers, engage in deep learning and receive support from a network of caring individuals. Some students, however, don’t take advantage of all the benefits their institution has to offer outside the classroom.

To promote access and awareness of campus involvement, colleges and universities have leveraged digital resources and tools to meet the learner where they are. Inside Higher Ed compiled four examples of digital interventions that help create in-person connections.

What’s the need? Many of today’s college students completed part of their high school learning remotely due to distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. This period has impacted students’ socio-emotional development and executive functioning, accelerating a downward trend in youth’s college readiness factors. College leaders say students are less likely to get involved in campus organizations or other social opportunities, according to an EAB report published this fall.

A spring 2024 Student Voice survey also found 35 percent of learners have never participated in any activities on campus.

Institutional strategies to highlight and encourage co-curricular attendance can help students develop resilience and executive functioning in these settings.

Campus Calendar

A fall 2023 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse found one-third of students said an online campus calendar would help boost their awareness of campus events. Additionally, of all the capabilities of a campus app, students are most interested in a campus events calendar (60 percent).

Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia launched a new campus app through Pathify this fall, connecting the university’s web-based calendar to the DalU app. The app also allows students to create events on the platform and record attendance through an app-generated QR code, which has helped encourage event attendance and collect data, university leaders say.

Awarding Credit for Event Attendance

Forty-two percent of students are interested in getting credit or an incentive for attending campus events, according to 2023 Student Voice data.

Coastal Carolina University uses its Coastal Connections event platform, hosted by Anthology, to track student engagement. Learners who are involved in various events and co-curricular activities can earn entry into an honors society of student leaders, Society 1954, after completing 25 experiences. The platform allows CCU leaders to retroactively award credit for student participation and record future events.

The University of Kentucky also incentivizes students to get plugged in on campus through financial measures. UK Invests, hosted on Fidelity Investments’ app, deposits money into students’ accounts when they participate in wellness activities such as completing financial education courses, attending career center events or participating in mindfulness training. UK uses data from Handshake, SUMO and BBNvolved to gather student attendance, which is housed in the university CRM and translated into a monthly total that is then awarded to the student.

Delivering Creative Marketing

Just under half (48 percent) of 2023 Student Voice respondents said better advertising and promotion of campus events such as guest speakers, sporting events and workshops would help increase their attendance.

Florida State University’s Student Affairs department created a marketing campaign, Hello FSU!, which provides the top five events, programs, activities and deadlines each Monday via email and on Instagram. Events are gathered through a monthly meeting of campus partners and an online submission form, and anyone who posts with the #HelloFSU hashtag can feature their events on the website, as well.

FSU uses Salesforce Marketing Cloud to send branded emails to students, and the department of student affairs uses Salesforce’s AI feature, Einstein, to nudge students with follow-up messages based on how each student has interacted with previous messages.

How does your campus leverage tech to engage with students? Tell us about it here.