The Problem
Campus shutdowns caused by the pandemic sent student life into disarray
Campus life has many staples that student affairs professionals have traditionally
turned to: Set up tables for student organizations, pass out fliers on the quad, and
offer free food — the cheesier the pizza, the better. Boom, done. The students will
be engaged, right?
Well, that sounds perfectly fine in theory, but National Louis University had long
found these classic efforts not to be enough. They had “meh” responses from students,
not “wow”s. And in March 2020, even the most basic programs became downright impossible
due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Suddenly, having virtual offerings became not just a nice-to-have supplemental idea;
it became an urgent need. Marquece Holifield and her teammates needed to build virtual
campus communities and programs, or the entire campus community would be non-existent
for the foreseeable future.
Now, it must be noted that Marquece and her colleagues love a good challenge. They’re
an enthusiastic bunch who’ve happily barreled through plenty of barriers before. It’s
just that the pandemic presented obstacles unlike any others before it.
It seemed like they would have to have to redesign many of their long-trusted processes.
Talk about overwhelming!
“We were already understaffed and each wore a dozen hats. When COVID hit, it was like
‘oh, we need to exchange out our entire wardrobe for twenty new hats?! It seemed ridiculous,
but I knew we had to do something. We couldn’t abandon our students; we just had to
abandon our usual practices.” — Marquece Holifield
The Solution
Adapt and reinvigorate campus life through innovative virtual programs, supported
and measured by Presence
Fortunately, all it took to vanquish Marquece’s understandable sense of doom and gloom
was a phone call. After speaking with her Happiness Expert, she was inspired to use
Presence in new ways, utilizing industry-leading tools she already had access to —
tools that were designed with virtual engagement in mind from the get-go.
So, over just a few weeks, Marquece and her teammates — in her own office and beyond
— worked to design a robust catalog of virtual programming.
They were super proud of their progress (if they must say so themselves) but one unknown
factor remained: The students. Would they find virtual engagement to be, well, engaging?
After all, it had never been tested at National Louis before.
Fortunately, students steadily trickled in — not merely attending the programs but
fully participating and praising them! They especially adore the flexibility that
virtual programming offers. Students can attend events and complete co-curricular
courses at their own time, place, and pace. Working a part-time job, caring for children,
or sleeping at odd hours doesn’t disqualify any student from robust engagement; on-demand
programming is designed with exactly those concerns in mind!
“Students who couldn’t participate at all are now able to! No one is ‘too busy’ because
our programs are too flexible to accept that as an excuse. Presence has made all the
difference in making virtual engagement a benefit, rather than a barrier.” — Marquece
Holifield
But having the gusto to go out and create virtual programming didn’t alone lead
to a successful semester for National Louis. All of their efforts were powered by
Presence — tying together the creation, promotion, and assessment of virtual programming
in one intuitive platform. Presence tools have allowed National Louis to truly thrive
within its new virtual reality rather than merely survive.
“Once students get a hold of the Presence mobile app, they get really excited. They
gush about things like ‘Oh, I can add things to my calendar! I can look every day
and see what’s going on on campus. I can plug the whole week in!’ The student buy-in
has been amazing.” — Marquece Holifield
Students can easily find out about upcoming live events, as well on-demand streaming
content, via National Louis’s Presence portal. And staff love that they can automatically
track attendance (through Presence’s new integration with Zoom) then gain insightful
assessment data from it.
Gamification has played a particularly big role in motivating students to attend
their first virtual programs and keep coming back. Marquece and her team can embed
videos, quizzes, and reflections right into each experience, allowing students to
test their own learning and earn prizes based on points that are automatically calculated
by Presence’s software.
Event check-ins have also been simplified. All attendance is now tracked automatically
through Presence’s new Zoom/Team integration — saving staff lots of time and giving
them access to great real-time analytics.
Finally, Marquece treasures the fact that Presence’s Happiness Team was ready and
eager to guide and inspire her throughout the virtual transition. They proactively
encouraged her to think boldly and get creative in using Presence’s progressive, industry-leading
tools to amplify virtual student engagement.
“Franklin, our Happiness Expert, is a phenomenal partner. It’s more than just a business
relationship. We’ve developed this very professional friendship in which we frequently
catch up on life and what’s going on. But also because of his in-depth student affairs
knowledge, when I’m trying to figure out how we can meet a challenge, adapt to a different
way of working, or create a solution in Presence, he’s right there with me. He has
the forethought to offer great ideas that are realistic, too.” — Marquece Holifield
Thanks to Presence, Marquece didn’t have to toss out everything she had ever learned
about student affairs; she merely had to adapt it. It even gave many of her colleagues
in other departments the pushes they needed to embrace innovation and get creative
in meeting the ever-changing needs of today’s students.
Everyone at the institution is now able to focus on creating immersive and power programs
rather than worrying about the logistics and if students are going to show up.
The Future
Making the virtual experience even more seamless and impactful
Because New Student Orientation 2020 was fully virtual (run through Presence!), Presence
has been integral to every new student from the very beginning of their campus life
journey. That means that in the next few months and years, using Presence will be
second nature to them.
Soon, students will intrinsically know that the mobile portal is the place to look
for upcoming events, student org opportunities, leadership election polls, event registration
forms, budget requests, and more. Paper forms and overly complex processes will seem
laughably antiquated, weak shadows of the far superior solutions that students will
quickly become used to.
“Students are basically already addicted to adding things to their calendars. I hear
it every day; they’re so excited about how easy it is and what’ll mean for them student
orgs and individual learning moving forward. Oh and I love love love that we had a
lot of aesthetic control in how our portal was built, in what it looks like. I know
that that’ll be huge in other departments getting on-board, too.” – Marquece Holifield
Marquece also plans to utilize Presence’s experiences feature (already one of her
favorite tools) for virtual community service. This will allow her to build a catalog
of service-learning opportunities and automatically award students certificates, points,
and prizes — plus measure their attainment of skills, all complemented by Presence’s
service-learning tracking feature.
The COVID-19 pandemic threw a major wrench into National Louis’s path, but thanks
to the student affairs team’s willingness to experiment with new ideas, empowered
and informed by tech, the campus community is using that wrench to build a campus
community that’s stronger than ever before — even from students’ mobile devices.
