It is no surprise that schools have invested resources to create thriving social communities.  Today’s students are not just digital natives, they’re digital ninjas who do everything from banking and paying bills to ordering dinner and purchasing cars on their phones.  The Pew Research Center recently published research about teens and technology and reported that nearly all of them have access to a smartphone which is a nearly 25% increase since 2014.  What is amazing about this research is that the trends held true across demographic groups.  What higher education leadership needs to take away from this is that students navigate the world through their phones.  Pew also reported that over 50% of teens affirmed that it would be very difficult for them to give up social media.  The vast majority of them utilize social media on a nearly daily basis.  Social media is how traditional aged college students connect.  

 

College Marketing and Communications teams know that social media is king and have capitalized on this by creating school Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other social media accounts to communicate with students.  While schools don’t have much control over these  accounts and pages in terms of controlling who can join them, rules of engagement, etc. they can be useful for attracting students to the institution and for keeping families informed about events. However, they do little to actually create and curate digital community among students.  Why do these pages need to do more than just communicate information?  Well, students do not necessarily engage on campus to the same degree and in the same ways that they did prior to Covid.  Therefore, we need to figure out how to build true community in new and innovative ways.  Schools can and should capitalize on the fact that students prefer to connect digitally.  This means that they don’t all have to land on campus before they begin to build the friend networks that we know help foster the sense of belonging that years of research indicates is critical to student success and persistence.  When new students are introduced to your thriving digital network as soon as they enroll in classes, they can begin to connect with other students and institutions can begin to offer support to students in targeted yet unthreatening ways.

 

In a traditional campus environment, institutions will deliver information to students aligned with pain points in the student lifecycle.  Email is not a medium that students embrace fully.  As a result, they often miss important details connected to their experience.  Additionally, targeted email communications based on early alerts (while well intended) can come across as intimidating (you missed your payment deadline, you are failing one of your classes, we’re reaching out because someone was concerned that you are exhibiting signs of stress, etc.).   Sadly, this can have the effect of further isolating the very students these communications are intended to support.  The challenge then becomes, how do we make sure that critical information is accessible to all students when they need it?  School administrators can identify the pain points during the student lifecycle and can easily map out those pain points on a term by term calendar.  From there it is relatively easy to create messaging that can be pushed out to students (via text or campus app notification) where students can engage with that messaging on their own terms.  This represents a fundamental but necessary change in the way we communicate with students.  If we truly want to support students and help them be more successful, we must meet them where they live – and when it comes to communication, that means leaning into mobile technology.  

 

If you are an administrator struggling with this challenge, here are some tips for getting started with a mobile communication plan:

• Involve students – the most thriving digital spaces on college campuses are curated for students by students.  There are many benefits to having a student panel drive your campus app.  First and foremost, they understand the student experience in a way that administrators don’t and therefore tend to create and curate content that resonates with students.  They are also incredibly adept at developing unique and creative ways to engage students digitally.  When you can get buy-in and participation from Student Government, you also have the added benefit of getting broader campus-wide adoption.  This particular group also does a great job of setting the tone for the type of communication that is expected in the space.
• Make sure to partner with your Admissions and Orientation teams so that new students understand that your campus app or digital space will be the primary form of communication between the institution and the students.  When your Admissions team is driving new students to your digital space, they can begin to connect with other new students well in advance of when classes begin.  This means that many of your new students will begin their college journey with an established network of friends, which is critical to helping students feel like they belong.
• You may receive pushback from faculty and staff who believe that email needs to remain the primary form of communication with students to ensure that students receive all of the information they need and that there is a proper paper trail that provides proof of which students received what communication.  Since digital communications also have a “footprint”, it is easy to determine which students received what communication.  In addition, they are more likely to actually engage with the information, determine if it is relevant to them, and click on links that take them to additional information if needed.

 

Higher education leaders across the globe are dealing with the same challenges around communicating and engaging with students where they live – on their phones.  Some schools have pivoted more easily than others.  If you have had experience with this sort of transformation on your campus, please share a little about that story in the comments below.  We can all learn and grow together as we work to solve this complex problem.