Baton Rouge Community College Removes Longstanding Engagement Barriers

About Baton Rouge Community College

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Involve allows us to reach every type of student: the student who is always online can see a full list of events to attend, as well as student clubs and orgs to join. The student who loves their smartphone can stay connected through our Involve app. And the student who appreciates face-to-face engagement can stop by our office, and I’ll be ready to help them find things to connect with on campus.

Jolanda Taylor

The Challenge

Previously, students who wanted to get involved in student clubs and organizations at Baton Rouge Community College had to be intentional about becoming engaged. They would first need to navigate through several layers of BRCC’s website to find a list of active and inactive groups.

The website only provided a list of club names. To find out more information—including event dates, contact information and the club’s purpose and mission—students would have to call, email or visit The Office of Student Life.

All involvement was funneled through Student Life’s highly dedicated, yet limited number of staff. Students had to be enthusiastic and determined to self-start their engagement and, thus, co-curricular life at BRCC was not fully realized.

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At the community college, many students have various responsibilities in addition to taking classes. To get them involved, information has to be readily available and events have to be highly convenient. If it’s a ton of work for them to get involved, they won’t bother. That’s what was happening in the past before we had Involve.

Jolanda Taylor

The Solution & Results

One-stop engagement hubs promote organization membership and event attendance

Modern Campus Involve has opened up a whole new world of engagement for BRCC students—with the institution’s branded web portal and mobile app serving as one-stop shop hubs for Student Life.

In a few simple clicks, students can filter through categories like environmental, activism/awareness and health & wellness to discover clubs and organizations that fit their interests. Better yet, they can see essential information about each group, such as its mission, weekly meeting times, upcoming events and membership requirements. They can even select ‘contact’ or ‘join’ to introduce themselves to the group’s president or advisor, or to ask questions. 

Jolanda Taylor, Assistant Director of Student Life, also appreciates that Involve empowers students to update information for the clubs and orgs they lead. She simply grants students custom administrative access, and Involve’s user-friendly interfaces tells students what to do, no web coding skills nor marketing expertise required.

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Involve makes it easy for students to find accurate information about our clubs and orgs without requiring a ton of guidance from staff.

Jolanda Taylor

The web portal and mobile app also serve as comprehensive portals for all campus events—whether they’re hosted by a student organization or by college staff. Students can filter through tags to find events that fit their schedule and that are free, include food, take place outdoors, offer giveaways and more. 

Involve has presented more options for students other than emailing or visiting The Office of Student Life. Students can jumpstart their own engagement on the go, from home or anywhere else they have internet access.

Involve’s Points system incentives more students to engage in Welcome Week activities

For BRCC, Involve’s benefits go beyond event and org promotion; The Office of Student Life staff smartly leverage Involve’s Points feature to incentive students to engage more frequently and deeply in Welcome Week activities.

Here’s how it works: Taylor and her coworkers assign each event or opportunity a point value—a number students can view in the Involve web portal and mobile app. Participating students are then awarded those allotted points and, once they reach a high point total, can collect prizes, such as branded college merchandise or free brunch. 

Taylor is delighted by how well Points have resonated with students! In reviewing a list of top point-earners, she found many students who she hadn’t heard of before—students who did not have official leadership roles and were newly engaged, seemingly motivated to collect points. 

Digital IDs simplify and fast-track event sign-ins

BRCC students and staff used to view paper sign-in sheets as a necessary evil: necessary because they had no other way of accessing event engagement, but evil because paper sheets required staff to discern students’ handwriting and input names manually.

But BRCC has since banished paper sign-ins to history, swapping messy signatures for crystal clear Involve-powered QR codes that students sync to their phones. Staff simply swipe each code with Involve’s CheckPoint technology, and the complete attendance list gets saved.

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I love the Digital ID. Students are so excited about it; it makes collecting attendance so much easier.

Jolanda Taylor

Powerful analytics gives BRCC a clear picture of student behavior and drives decision-making

Having accurate attendance records also gives BRCC access to invaluable engagement data, which The Office of Student Life is using to better understand their students and improve event offerings. 

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We are using the data to drive our decisions about when and where to even host events. Since our students are all commuters, we have to engage them during the limited windows each day when they’re on campus. Involve allows us to see the trends: what days and times are working well for which demographics of students.

Jolanda Taylor

Taylor especially likes that she can connect Involve with BRCC’s student information system, then filter event sign-ins and membership lists by custom attributes. It’s helped her discover patterns among different student demographics.

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By diving into the data that Involve presents so nicely, I get to know the types of students that are participating in events. Are they first-year; are they returning students? Are they nursing students, or arts and sciences students? It makes collecting attendance so much more rewarding than just having a total headcount.

Jolanda Taylor

 

BRCC's Favorite Features

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