During a “normal” year, commuter colleges face multiple challenges in helping their students feel connected to their school. To help build a sense of community, colleges once relied on events and on-campus activities, as well as communal spaces designed to foster social engagement.
But that’s all changed this year — and not just for community and other commuter colleges. Lack of in-person interaction has most every educational institution struggling to engage its students in education — and socialization.
As we did when looking to improve communication, UHMC turned to technology to help us bolster a sense of community. But this time, it was the students themselves who led the initiative.
The student government identified two crucial areas that needed additional support during the pandemic:
- Keeping the student body updated on the college’s coronavirus response and policies
- Supporting students in isolation by moving student life online
Using the out-of-the-box software Ready Education, the UHMC student government developed the UH Maui College app, which it had already planned to implement before the coronavirus hit. Student government funds backed the project, which was facilitated by a Ready Education representative who mentored the students during the design and development process.
Here’s how the app is accomplishing the above initiatives.
Updates About the Coronavirus
Keeping our student body safe is, of course, of utmost importance for the college. We take great strides in making sure that everyone —students, faculty, staff, and visitors — are apprised of our current COVID policies, including social distancing guidelines and the use of masks. Any updates or policy changes are communicated through the app.
But the UH Maui College app goes a step further by providing a means of contact tracing. In addition to logging their body temperature, whenever a student enters or leaves a campus building, they scan a QR code with the app. If someone should test positive for the coronavirus, we then have a way to retrace their steps so that we can alert anyone else who may have come into contact with them.
We also push daily morning reminders to everyone to update their health pass, which includes questions governed by the CDC. The app has proven an efficient way to both keep students safe and informed and to protect their privacy.
Supporting Students in Isolation
Well before COVID, the UH Maui College app was envisioned as a way to connect those students who don’t have easy access to campus. As a rural commuter school with students on other islands, we have a student body that does not always have face-to-face interactions with their peers and faculty. The app offers a way for these students to get involved in student life activities, such as clubs and webinars, and to receive general announcements.
We couldn’t have foreseen that so many of our students would become remote learners, but that has become our new reality. That means that the percentage of students we thought would originally benefit most from the app has now ballooned to include almost the entire student population.