For the past decade I have written and spoken about the importance of social connectedness and student success.  Recognizing that there are many reasons why a student may not complete their college degree, I’ve tried to focus my attention on the primary factors that drive persistence (or drop-out).  There is a large body of work by researchers like Vincent Tinto, Alexander Astin, and George Kuh, including this more recent article by Jeremy Finn and Kayla Zimmer that examine the importance of student engagement and sense of belonging and why they matter to student success.  We know that students who are isolated are more likely to drop out of school without earning a degree. Relationship-Rich Education:  How Human Connections Drive Success in College by Peter Felton and Leo M. Lambert does a great job of explaining why this is true.  Having over a decade of experience working in this space, I believe that engagement and sense of belonging are important to student success because they really speak to the idea of connectedness.  Can one feel like they belong and engage in meaningful ways if they aren’t actually connected to other individuals?  Connectedness is something I have studied for years and I’m thrilled to be able to now share empirical evidence that students who are more connected socially are more likely to persist in college.

The lives of today’s college students are very different than those of the average student in previous decades.  Prior to 2010, schools relied on campus events and activities, or participation in clubs and organizations to help students build their friend networks on campus.  While these are still viable ways that students can (and perhaps should) connect with one another, they don’t support the way this generation of students prefer to connect and interact. The evolution of technology has, in many ways, changed the way humans engage and communicate with one another. My team and I witnessed the power of technology in fostering a sense of belonging on our campus when we rolled out our mobile app to incoming students.  The app was eagerly adopted and students immediately began to connect with one another – forming friend groups and networks of support before they even started classes.  In fact, I quickly discovered that one of the most powerful predictors of student success on our campus after the launch of the app was app adoption.  So, what does this mean for the average student success practitioner?

Generation Z students are digital ninjas who are accustomed to doing everything on their phones – from ordering dinner, to banking, making purchases (my daughters just bought a car online!), and meeting people.  Their mobile phones are an extension of their person.  They expect to be able to do every thing they need to do at school on their phones and recent research from the Pew Research Center suggests that students are more likely to have a smart phone than they are a laptop or desktop computer.  Here are my top tips for effectively engaging digital natives:

1. Ask students how they prefer to be communicated with and which topics they prefer to be notified about.  As with so many other aspects of their lives, we need to make sure that we understand student communication preferences and comply with them.  CY2 is an elegant solution that integrates with PeopleSoft for managing communication preferences with students.  European colleagues who have experience with this solution on their campuses report that it has really helped solve the communication gap with students.
2. Provide a digital space (social feed) accessible to only your students, faculty, and staff where participants can find individuals with shared interests, share information, and build a network of support.  Pathify, Campus App and Campus Groups provide space for this type of interaction that can be quite effective when there is broad campus-wide adoption.
3. School websites are vast repositories of information that can be difficult to navigate.  Chatbots embedded on school websites can help students connect with the information they are seeking quickly.  Ocelot and Mongoose Harmony are both good options for the higher ed space.
4. Lean into mobile technology.  Any processes you can enhance to be completed utilizing mobile technology will be more fully embraced by this generation of students.  Providing a mobile experience that allows students to pay their bill, register for classes, check their schedule and manage the business of being a student can remove barriers to success for many.  There are many solutions in the market that support students in this way including Pathify, Modo Labs, and Campus App.

How is your school fostering sense of belonging with your digital natives?  Please share any success stories and best practices below so that we can all learn from one another.