When college and university offices consider launching a new platform or app for their communities, they’re often torn between the need to provide a service that their constituents want and the fear of paying for one more thing that nobody uses.
Too many offices have worked hard to launch a new website, service, or app for their students and alumni only to see nobody use it. We chalk it up to “platform fatigue,” the weariness we all feel when we have to sign up for another website with another account and remember another password. Members of our community, we think, already use so many platforms, websites, and apps that they don’t have room for one more. That’s why ours failed.
But I’m here to explain why platform fatigue is a myth and why platforms really fail: There’s no such thing as platform fatigue—there are only bad platforms.
Events? They're on top of them. Mentoring program? Enormous success. Measuring engagement? They have a 16-point model for doing just that.
In short, Marquette has it figured out.
We were fortunate enough to have the chance to catch up with Marquette's Engagement Director, Dan DeWeerdt, after he spoke at the CASE V Conference in Chicago back in December.
We asked him about facilitating mentorship, measuring engagement, and revising your strategy along the way.
If running successful networking events and mentoring programs were as easy as making an introduction over email, the job of alumni relations and career services offices would be pretty simple. But it's vital that the connections we make between students and alumni not feel contrived.
Finding the line between artificial awkwardness and organic openness can be difficult.
Lindsay McConchie and Kathryn Tripp are Harvard Business School's associate and assistant directors of student & young alumni engagement, respectively.
We asked them to give us a preview of their CASE D1 conference panel, "Close Encounters: Creating Organic Connections Between Students and Alumni."
Recently, we've been getting questions specifically about how Switchboard helps students and alumni advance their careers. So our dev team pulled some numbers on career-related posts across all higher ed Switchboards.
The results are clear: Students and alumni trust Switchboard to help them find their next job and plan their careers in the long-term.