Western Illinois University Boosts Student Engagement with Points

How a public, 4-year university used Modern Campus Involve to gamify co-curricular participation and energize student engagement across campus. 

About Western Illinois University

 

 

"We were able to see that students who earned points had a higher rate of return for us across every category.”

Nick Katz | Director of Student Engagement

The Challenge:

The Office of Student Engagement at Western Illinois University (WIU) wanted a new system to bolster student engagement with campus events and activities. Their existing student engagement system was unintuitive for students and staff. More than that, it also lacked granular visibility into data about which students were going to which events.

“We were largely dissatisfied with our relationship with our previous company,” said Nick Katz, Director of Student Engagement at WIU. “It was difficult to get support. The system was clunky, and we weren’t able to track all of the data that we wanted to track.

This created friction for both staff and students, limiting engagement and visibility.

“It wasn’t easy to have our students see what was happening on campus or engage with them from an organizational perspective,” he said.

When looking for a new solution, the WIU team was intrigued by the point system that Modern Campus Involve features as a way to drive event participation through gamification. From a customer service standpoint, Katz said it was an easy decision to move over.

"When it came to the back end and being able to operate Modern Campus, it was a lot more user friendly for us.”

Nick Katz

The Solution:

WIU’s Purple & Gold Points, designed and implemented using Modern Campus Involve, incentivize student engagement by offering prizes to students who attend a certain number of campus events.

Their team dove into their existing data to design the right incentives for the program, testing Purple & Gold Points within WIU’s Counselling Center before launching a pilot project in the wider Health & Wellness area.

“After the second year, we knew this was growing, and students were liking the points system,” said Katz. “We needed to bump this into something bigger.”

In the summer of 2025, WIU launched the points system campus wide.

Here’s how it works:

• Students earn Purple & Gold Points for attending events open to anyone on campus
• After collecting a certain number of points, students are eligible for prizes, which include gift cards or an iPad or PlayStation 5 for the most involved students
• Event notices posted around campus now feature marketing badges that tell students which events will earn them points
• An online portal allows students to see events that earn points, and allows faculty and other campus partners to widely publicize events
• A leaderboard tracks which students have earned the most points, adding another layer of gamification
• The Office of Student Engagement measures which students swipe into which events, giving them new visibility into event attendance and other engagement metrics

What began as a successful pilot had become a campus-wide phenomenon as the student engagement team brought in partners from academics, fine arts, and athletics who saw the potential that the program offered. The academic side is bought into the point system, which has opened up more students to engaging in events. 

“More groups are able to see the events that are going on. It’s not just a flyer in the math department hallway. It’s in larger places now.”

Lucy Ade | Assistant Director for Programming of Student Engagement

The results:

Campus involvement surged:

After building out their points program and bringing it to the entire campus, WIU has seen a significant bump in the number of students attending events.

“Throughout all of 2024-2025, we had around 20,000 instances when a student checked into an event,” said Katz. “We hit that number early January this year. I believe it was a 60% increase at that time.”

WIU unlocked deeper insight into student engagement:

A customized report gives the Office of Student Engagement at WIU greater visibility into which students are engaging with events, allowing them to tailor their offerings and provide personalized support depending on a wide variety of parameters. Leveraging a customized report, they're able to connect analytics to points. 

"Now we’re able to connect all the data and see who’s going to events, filtered by whether they’re athletes, veteran students, first-gen students, gender, city, or which residence hall they’re a part of.”

Nick Katz

Student retention metrics improved:

The data shows students who have earned points are more likely to return, no matter how they break down the demographics.

“Some categories were up by one or two percentage points, and one was up by more than 5%,” said Ade. “Every single category showed a higher rate of return if they had points.”

Involvement is sparking new connections for students:

Ade regularly hears personal feedback about student involvement with events. While points get many students in the door, the opportunity to meet new people keeps them going back.

“I talked to one student who had around 6,000 points. She had a friend with her, and she said: ‘I originally started going to events just because there were points. Then I started having fun with these events. Then I met this friend, and she’s now one of my best friends. We met at an event that I had just gone to for points.”

Lucy Ade