Campus Community Hub (eCH)
Who does eCH target? How does it provide value to them?
Who?
Teenage prospective students who are choosing a university by looking for insights beyond typical marketing material on college web site or what is posted by the university’s social marketer on the Facebook page.
How?
Using eCH, drab marketing material comes to life for prospective students and their parent in a rich design that allows these would-be customers of university to not just consume information but to ask questions; post their own questions and have other students or university staff post replies.
Prospective students & their parents have many questions. They look for answers from all sources. Reading FAQ pages with no way to ask further clarifying questions is no longer an option for a university seeking to enroll new students.
eCH’s interactive design allows prospective students to search and browse for previous posts or questions asked by people in their situation. Thus, a university staff is not burdened with redundant questions.
eCH helps engage Prospective students with rich, multi-dimensional content about the university, its culture, its programs and its environment by way of neatly stacking content in various categories.
Who?
Anxious new students looking to acclimate in a new place as they start their journey.
How?
New students are seeking for familiar surroundings in their new place. They seek friends with similar backgrounds, food that tastes like home, common cultural activity that makes them feel at home.
CCH provides new students easy access to friends, food, culture and other common activities through its different Categories by same names. New students can meet friends, search for food options and look for cultural activities by browsing posts within these categories. If none found, they can post their own, allowing others in same situation to reply to their queries.
CCH lifts the barriers between students sharing same background but otherwise physically disconnected. It brings students together in a collaborative way quickly and efficiently.
Who?
Active current students wanting to collaborate and work together with other fellow students.
How?
Students currently enrolled have many needs to engage with other students for several different reasons through their tenure at the university. For example, students look for roommates multiple times; they form study groups and seek guidance from others; they strive to be part of social or athletic clubs; they look for jobs on campus; and they may have the need to buy or sell stuff from/to their fellow students.
Without CCH, these activities are performed in a very hodge-podge and disparate ways. For example, a roommate is sought through word of mouth or by posting among hundreds of other posts on the bulletin board in student union. For Sale items vie for buyers’ attention in same discouraging way. Study help is typically sought by asking friends. And the Facebook page, with no capabilities for search maybe used without results to form social clubs.
With CCH, these tasks can all be contained within categories like Roommates, Study Help, Clubs, Activities, Jobs and For Sale. Students can post and other students can reply and comment. An interactive bond is thus established immediately. Also with CCH, students can quickly search within these categories for like-minded posts, a facility that eludes Facebook posts today.
Who?
Alumni in need of interaction with their alma mater and wanting to network with fellow alumni
How?
Alumni can get their questions answered on CCH by browsing or searching for previous posts without having to call the university staff, thereby reducing calls to university and allowing alumni to self-serve themselves.
Alumni category in CCH, visible only to other alumni fosters collaboration between people who may not otherwise know of other alumni in same situation or with same background.
Who?
Finally, at the center: university administrative staff, ensuring free yet secure flow of valuable information, benefiting from overall interaction.
How?
The effective yet elegantly simple Admin interface allows university staff to be in 100% control of users and their postings. Beautiful yet detailed reports give administrators deep insight into activities and allow them to focus their energies on areas that need further boost or more close supervision.