Dear Bliary (Blog + Diary):
This is my first blog ever! I feel that it is somewhat like a public digital diary (no secrets here!). I am looking forward to being apart of the Ground Team. At New Mexico State University, students have begun joining Red Rover. During our orientation the first week of school, I got to talk with the students about Red Rover and encourage them to sign up. Their replies: “Sick!” and “Oh nice, that makes sense!”. At NMSU, we are all excited!
We strive to make Red Rover a fairly intuitive tool for our users, but questions and suggestions are inevitable. Each new school adopting Red Rover means more users need help and customer care becomes harder to manage. A map of how we handle user questions, concerns, and suggestions is an important step in scaling larger. Our goal is 100% user happiness while maintaining a simple, easy to use, scalable, cost effective solution to manage the process. Below is our first run at visually mapping out Red Rover’s customer care. The questions at the bottom are open questions we’ll be answering over the next couple weeks as we prepare V2 of this map.
(Click here to see a full image)
Well I guess i’m officially a ground team member now. This is new to me, but i’m excited to get things rolling. School is in full swing and classes so far have been good. I’m excited to get in to routine so I can get some work done. I’m excited to see how red rover integrates into the LCSC campus! #redrover
Yesterday, USA Today reported on how student participation in co-curricular (outside the classroom) activities leads to higher GPAs and a more satisfied social life.
"College experts say students who participate in extracurricular activities are more engaged in the college experience, and benefits can be seen both in and outside the classroom."
The article's focus wasn't about participation in standard clubs such as German and Chess, but rather in more obscure clubs such as Michigan's Squirrel Club or Harvard's College Cube Club. In other words, the long tail of student interests.
But ask any student activities department how they would feel about a 50% increase in registered campus clubs and you'd experience a face of joyous panic.
Supporting the long tail means the position of student activities also has to shift from gate keeper to facilitator. Instead of registering, formalizing, and monitoring every organization, support a platform that allows students to self-organize around an infinite number of interests and act as the facilitator to introduce like minded students together.
"Seth have you met Randy, you both like White Water Canoeing"
Allowing bizarre peer-to-peer learning communities to form through the long tail will not only increase engagement, but also will lead to longer lasting friendships because the commonality of "we're the only ones who love XYZ" is already established. As John Gardner, president of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education said in the USA Today article:
"Friendship formation is task No. 1 for most students. If you don't make friends, you're lonely, you're anxious, you feel sort of adrift."
New tools are supporting schools as they shift towards a more decentralized peer-to-peer engagement model.
Through the schools using our Red Rover campus directory tool, we can actually visualize, and for the first time quantify, what the long tail of engagement looks like.
Last week I spent two days at New Mexico State University training their student leaders and staff on the launch of Red Rover as their new campus directory. Holly Rae Bemis-Schurtz (pictured below) from the Student Success office hosted me. Beyond making me feel extremely welcomed by suggesting the best guacamole and salsa in town (Andele), Holly's championing of Red Rover ahead of time has made for an already successful launch. Here's to a great year working together!
Hostess extraordinaire, Holly!
Airplane breakfast of champions
1st round of student leaders – left side of room.
1st round of student leaders – right side of room.
White Sands National Monument looms in the back ground and makes every photograph amazing.
Running Windows on a Mac? Oh the horror!
The staff training turned out to be a packed room.
Advertising NMSU on Twitter. Holly is ahead of the game.
2nd student leader training.
Me and the sorority gang.
From Independence Day fireworks, to the sounds of the World Cup vuvuzelas, to thermometer-busting heat waves, this July was a sizzler! As summer orientations continue and students prepare for the first day of classes, we’re here to keep you in the know.
Your custom Campus Directory web badge is freshly cooked and ready for you to pick up and put on your school’s website.
Contact us and get yours today.
When we compared campus interest tag clouds, we knew music and movies would be common top-ranking interests. But looking past the top tags, things get interesting. At John Jay College, poetry and Forensic Science are near the top. Calculus is popular at West Texas A&M University. And College of Coastal Georgia? They love their sweet tea:
San Antonio College wins the award for most tags per person with a 10.58 average. The College of Coastal Georgia is a close second at 10.51, followed by John Jay with 9.92 tags per person.
To see what interests students on your campus, go to your Campus Directory and click on “Campus Interests.” You’re bound to find something, and someone, interesting.
While summer is usually a student’s vacation time, the engineering students of Enlight at UW-Madison have opted to work on control hardware and software for the Maquina fountain outside UW’s Engineering Hall. But they aren’t all work; according to their website, these engineers also have a soft spot for pizza.
When a student joins a group through the Student Directory, the leaders of that group receive an email to let them know. We’ve just redesigned these notifications to align more with the directory’s design, and to highlight more of the social aspects (profile picture, weblinks, and interests) of the new member. The goal is to prompt the group leader to reach out to the new student and make them feel welcome.
Calling all Student Affairs Tweeple! Join in the #SAChat every Thursday on Twitter, and stay connected with the Student Affairs Community. Follow @The_SA_Blog for all the latest.
At Minnesota’s Carlton College, students pulled a truly epic prank last month, transforming their astronomical observatory into a giant R2D2. With sheets, cardboard, and an epic sense of humor, these scamps got their campus looking to the stars. [via Holy Kaw!]
When a student joins their school’s campus directory and is recommended campus groups based on their interests and joins a group, the student leader of that group receives an email notification. Our first design (see image below) of the new member notification email was intended to be fun, hip, and student like. It turned out looking messy, confusing, and unaligned from the rest of the directory’s design.
In our second round of design (see image below), we wanted to align more with the directory’s design, as well as highlight more of the social aspects (profile picture, weblinks, and interests) of a student. The goal is to prompt the student leader to reach out to the new student and make them feel welcome.
This is a nice step in the right direction. As with all things in Red Rover, we’ll watch the data over time and make adjustments as needed.
I’m not a very good designer compared to really good designers, but give me an idea and an image and I’ll mesh it and recreate it with the best of ‘em.
In talking out the Georgia Highlands Campus Directory adoption strategy with Donny and John, John asked if we had a website badge they could put on their Student Life page for people to click on to go to the Campus Directory.
Several other schools have links that guide people from the student life page to the Campus Directory, but beyond the Red Rover logo, we didn’t have a website badge customizable for each school.
But the value was clear and so I set out to create a badge.
I started by exploring a few popular blogging sites for creative badges. Then Googled “Website Badges” and stumbled on this badge that I really liked:
The hover banner was the part I liked the most, but I had never created one before. While de-constructing the major pieces of the badge, I found the hover banner effect was a combination of drop shadowing and black triangles at each corner:
Lastly, I’m a huge fan of doing design and layout work on Keynote for Mac. Not at all what it was meant for, but works wonders for me.
This summer I have been working with Dean of Students Lori Berquam along with folks from the around the university to “develop and deliver recommendations on how UW-Madison, the Wisconsin Alumni Association, and the UW Foundation can enhance and transform the affinity UW-Madison students have for the University.” Basically what this means is, how can the university support or offer ways to make students at UW Madison become more engaged on campus and feel more a part of the university.
I’ve come to realize that there is a large spectrum of engagement on campus ranging from not involved at all to highly involved in campus affairs. First I’d like to point out that I feel it’s a good thing a spectrum exists, a campus full of non involved students would be detrimental to the institution, and at the same time, this university does not have to capacity to accommodate a campus full of highly involved students. In any event the goal of this committee is again, to create recommendations to Chancellor Martin on that will instill students with a sense of value for their university. In order to do this our committee has come up with a basic formula for achieving stronger student engagement:
Connection + Ownership = Engagement
Having a connection to the university is step number one in the formula. A connection is “the spark”. A resource, a voice, a person, a word, it’s a tangible connection to the institution and its legacy. Furthermore, deep connections shape ownership. Ownership I see as “the opportunity”. It’s the emotion, feeling, and/or philosophical understanding of the institution and its legacy. Students who see opportunity in the resources available on campus will create ownership of what they are a part of and also the university on the whole. The combination of both connection and ownership creates engagement which is “the action”. It’s giving back either in time, financial support, ect.
A roadblock I along with the rest of the committee has come across is:
How/Where do we create ownership?
All students have a connection or “spark” to the university. They chose to attend here for one reason or another and they interact daily with the many different resources on campus. The question however still exists how do we create an environment where students understand those resources available are specific to an education at UW-Madison? (a.k.a. Ownership)
Again it is important to remember the spectrum of engagement. A highly engaged student will have a high level of ownership for their university and will take a personal responsibility to set policy, exact change, etc. (Probably where most of the people reading this stand) Whereas ownership for a non-involved student may be successfully or unsuccessfully meeting the requirements of academic coursework for personal success. Overall, through ownership students will understand the importance of activities around campus.
So this is where I need your help:
Where do we create ownership? How might we create ownership? Inspire ownership? Are there units/programs on campus already doing “Ownership”? What are our peers doing to inspire ownership?
Any thoughts, comments, suggestions, questions, or whatever would be largely appreciated. I’ll be taking any and all comments posted below with me to my next committee meeting to share them with the other group members.
On Wisconsin!
Breaking news!
College students nationwide are interested in both music and movies. Yep, it’s true. You heard it here first.
When we decided to compare campus interest tag clouds, we knew there would be some common top interests, such as music and movies. But looking past the top interests is where it gets interesting. At John Jay College of Criminal Justice, poetry is hanging out right alongside the FBI and Forensic Science. Students at West Texas A&M University are into Calculus. And students at the College of Coastal Georgia? They love their sweet tea.
Not far off, colleges might be running ad campaigns promoting their college based on their campus’ top interests.
See for yourself, and let us know if you see anything interesting in the clouds.
College of Coastal Georgia:
Elgin Community College:
Georgia Highlands College:
John Jay College of Criminal Justice:
Lewis-Clark State College:
New York Institute of Technology:
San Antonio College:
University of Wisconsin – Madison:
West Texas A&M University:
