Students Want Existing Connections Uncovered On Campus

Tony Zanders

The freshman experience has always been an elusive target for higher ed institutions, primarily because it’s clear how to engage with high school students, and it’s clear how to engage with college students. But it’s the transition between high school and college that is consistently awkward for the student, the instructor, and the mentor. Entire departments are dedicated to this cracking the code on this one phenomenon. And a college’s impression on a freshman during that period has never been more important.

Schools of all sizes are being forced to get creative on helping students adjust, and the competition amongst schools is steeper because of today’s rich communication tools like Facebook. If a student has a disappointing freshman experience, their entire social network of 300-1000 freshmen at neighboring colleges will be made aware at the drop of a dime. But while this process seems elusive, years of experimentation dealing has made one solution clear: uncovering existing connections for students will ease the awkwardness of the freshman experience.

Students across the country are longing to find people like them. Transitioning from a 20-person class in high school, to a 20-person group within a 400-student class in college can be overwhelming. Most institutions are providing support using traditional methods. But today’s technology provides a scalable, cost-effective, and complimentary approach to engaging freshman during the first 120 days of classes.

Yesterday’s Methods

For decades now, colleges have implemented various courses and orientations on campus to help new students bond. In some, the grouping is more arbitrary, based on criteria like registration status or last name. Others are more targeted, with grouping based on common interests or common background. Alan Scher Zagier, an Associated Press Writer, recently covered traditional methods of freshman engagement on campuses around the US. He concluded that mass marketing to students is becoming increasingly ineffective. Zagier also noticed a trend that institutions are becoming more savvy, rather than becoming lax after the student is enrolled.

“Living/Learning Groups” or “Freshman Interest Groups (FIGs)” are two of the types of communities that the writer observed, where institutions are leveraging the students’ common interests to help accelerate their sense of belonging. This approach does a great job leveraging two things that nearly all freshmen have in common: age and academic class. Today’s methods on the other hand leverages the missing piece that these students have in common: Facebook.

Today’s Methods

Sure, there’s a large stigma about the impracticality of social media in the higher ed business setting. And this is because the creators of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media tools have not focused their energies on our market. But what they have done is made it possible for companies like Inigral to build on top of their tools to support the unique needs of higher ed. Facebook has created a platform where over 300 million people have voluntarily offered up information like favorite music, movies, books, and other points of interest. Inigral went one step further to help college and university audiences share the information that is practical to building relationships on campus. From major, to residence hall and from hometown to favorite organizations, students are finally able to uncover existing connections that are practical to the college experience, within Facebook.

Some would ask, “Why not just stick with what works?” Well, it’s just tough to ignore that our target audience is there (on Facebook at least). Earlier, we alluded to a freshman being able to spread a message to over a thousand of their peers in an instant within Facebook. This is due to the fact that the vast majority of college freshmen are on Facebook.

Taking yesterday’s living/learning communities and combining them with a private, secure, online community within Facebook makes for a rich, practical social media experience that meets a college administrator’s goals all in a place where students are comfortable. To learn more about Inigral’s solution to enhancing belonging during the freshman experience, visit us to sign up for a demonstration today.