Harford Community College Discovered that Engaged Students are 53.7% More Likely to Persist

How a suburban community college leverages Modern Campus Involve to engage learners and drive co-curricular strategies

Involve is a true student engagement software. It’s not online conversations, it’s sending them to a place where they can engage in person.

Jo ChaseStudent Engagement Specialist

About Harford Community College

 

 

7,000

degree-seeking students

 

100%

commuter students

 

35

registered student organizations

The Challenge
Without sufficient engagement data, the Student Life team was unable to assess students' needs and design compelling programs

 

How do you compel commuter students to stay on campus outside of class to attend programs? Convincing students of the value of co-curricular engagement is especially challenging given that the overwhelming majority—80%—of today's college students work, with  39% working full time.   

For Harford Community College, the challenge is compounded by geography; the college is located in a rural/suburban area which means that public transportation options—which students rely upon heavily—aren’t very abundant.

Harford’s Student Life team knew that in order to engage students, they needed to design and build programs that are compelling and meet students when and where they are. The trouble was, without access to reliable engagement data, Student Life didn't know their students' interests and availabilities. 

The Solution

Leverage user-friendly tech tools to reach more learners and harness powerful analytics to understand students' needs, interests and challenges

 

Goal #3 on Harford Community College’s 2013-2017 strategic plan was to “develop resources and infrastructure required to meet future challenges.” One strategy they identified for this was to “invest in technology that will increasingly support student success and employee productivity.”

Our students are coming to us as digital natives. If we don’t create systems around tools that they’ll use and understand, then we’re not going to thrive in the way that we could.

Beth MosserAssociate Dean of Academic Operations

Modern Campus Involve was one of the first tools that Harford turned to in order to meet this goal. Rather than requiring Harford’s students to adapt to fit the college, the college adopted a tool that fits how students already obtain information.

Harford was able to combine knowledge of the public transit schedule with Involve's data insights, showing their Student Life staff the best days, times, and spaces to host programs for their students. Additionally, Involve’s simple interface and mobile app make it easy for students to learn about what’s happening on campus, even if their daily route doesn’t take them past the Student Center.

Having access to real-time data has also been extremely rewarding. By knowing, in the moment, who is and isn’t attending programs, staff and student leaders can make adjustments to improve their programs and engage more learners. College leadership is especially thrilled to have discovered a long-term statistic: students who attend events are 53.7% more likely to persist through to the next academic year! 

I’m inspired when I see our student leaders naturally use Involve to make better decisions based upon the data they have in front of them.

Beth Mosser
 

Harford Community College's Favorite Features

Real-Time Analytics

Digital, Mobile Marketing

Custom Demographics

Make decisions that improve programs and better support students by knowing, in the moment, who you are—and aren’t—reaching.

Simplify how students find involvement opportunities through a centralized, one-stop-shop mobile engagement portal. 

Synchronize custom demographic attributes—like major, class, birth year, grant status and more—to build a complete picture of involvement, and learn how to improve it.

Learn more Learn more

Learn more

 

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Manage and track student engagement and skills development inside and outside the classroom to drive student retention and outcomes.

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About Modern Campus

Modern Campus empowers 1,700+ higher education institutions to attract, engage, and retain learners for life with software solutions that enable a modern student experience. 

The Modern Campus learner-to-earner lifecycle platform powers solutions for web content managementconversational text messagingcatalog and curriculum managementcareer pathwaysstudent engagement and development, and non-traditional student management. The result: innovative institutions engage their modern learners for life, while providing modern administrators with the tools needed to streamline workflows and drive high efficiency.  

Learn how Modern Campus is leading the modern learner-to-earner movement at moderncampus.com and follow us on LinkedIn. 

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