The college experience ideally exposes students to a whole new world – ideas, professors, opportunities, and peers with different life experiences.
We hope students take advantage of their expanding worldview in this new landscape and build connections with those from different cultural, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
While this is often a welcome side effect of simply existing in a new university environment, schools can take steps to further leverage these benefits by employing tech-based solutions to further inspire students to make connections.
At Suitable, we make it easier than ever for students to create connections across cultural barriers, and our platform is specifically designed to support this endeavor.
Sparking Interest
Inspiring students to get involved on campus is about sparking interest, boosting motivation, and providing the structure students need to go further. In our gamified system, we utilize points, contests, and badges to leverage these techniques.
Each student experience is assigned a point value based on the level of engagement needed to attend or complete the activity, which motivates students to take the first step. We refer to this as “scaffolding,” providing the metaphorical infrastructure a student may need for a little push in the right direction.
Scaffolding can be thought of as a gentle structuring that makes it easy for students to take each step toward greater involvement on campus.
How Scaffolding Works: Real-World Example
If a student is looking to attend a cultural club but is anxious to dive head first into something new, our platform offers them a list of starter options, a low-point value activity that is introductory. This could be attending a club fair or a rush event.
Once a student attends this event, they are rewarded with points, which provides the instant gratification that younger generations of students expect.
Then, the app suggests slightly more involved events as the student becomes more comfortable. Allowing students to take these small steps outside of their comfort zone scaffolds them into attending events that may be totally new to them.
Students can also search through their school’s catalog of opportunities themselves, creating endless possibilities for boundary-breaking, connective experiences students can initiate together on campus.
The Importance of Cultural Engagement
Engagement in clubs and activities, particularly those with cultural significance, pushes students to connect across demographics, develop new skills and interests, and generally broaden their horizons, creating a better understanding of the world at large and setting them up for greater success post-graduation.
It can also create increased awareness around student-led causes on campus. With the right support, a student who was anxious to dip their toes into the social scene may work their way from a club meeting to becoming a member of a club, to graduating as an officer of the club they were once too nervous to join.
This is the type of impact that we can create when we make it not only easy but also fun and motivating for students to continuously develop and challenge themselves with new on-and-off-campus experiences.
Beyond the Commencement Stage
A well-supported, engaged student ultimately graduates with the foundation they need to enter the globally connected workforce.
Gaining skills in diverse spaces on campus leaves them more prepared for life after college: they are more willing to listen to differing views, more confident in trying new things, and more connected to the world around them.