How First Tech Fund Drives Digital Student Engagement
No matter what platforms and tools your team is using to manage your student-facing program experience, it’s a challenge to drive adoption. Students are busy!
First Tech Fund is leading the way here, with 400+ of their stakeholders on Campground, a platform designed to streamline their Fellow and Mentor experience. We know it’s working when students proactively ask, “Will these resources be on Campground?”
Here are the top 4 things program leaders, Kerianne Baylor and Deisy Navarro, did to drive digital engagement, which should be relevant whether you’re using Campground, Canvas, Slack, Notion, Hivebrite, Circle, or something else!
1. Introduce participants to the platform live at an upcoming event.
This will only take about 10 minutes and is key to establishing a connection between being a program participant and using the platform. During your next event, ask your participants to login to Campground and bookmark the URL. The FTF demo’d the platform at their Orientation live. Other actions could be having students complete a task live, such as uploading a profile picture or connecting with someone new. Mentioning Campground at following events will also remind participants of the importance of using the platform.
2. Include a section about Campground in your newsletter.
First Tech Fund’s weekly newsletter includes a section with reminders about tasks on Campground and available resources from recent events. This reminds fellows that they need to be checking the system regularly.
3. Share metrics with your participants to encourage engagement.
Deisy strategically shares some metrics with fellows to encourage engagement with Campground. For example, “Only 50% of fellows have completed tasks, so take some time this week to catch up.”
4. “The slides will be on Campground.”
When following up after events, let participants know they will find everything that they need at their ‘program hub.’ You can even share a link that will take them directly to a particular resource or folder in Campground. Doing this – instead of sharing attachments directly in an email – will train participants to seek out information on the platform first.
Driving student engagement is a challenge, but with intention, you can get the insights and activity you need!
