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Inside Bucks County Community College's Bucks+ Initiative
Description
Bucks County Community College (BCCC) partnered with Suitable to develop and scale the Bucks+ program. Being a 100% commuter school, BCCC struggled with student engagement and retention, as well as connection. With the help of the Bucks+ program and Suitable, students are able to enhance their personal and professional acumen by building critical competencies and career readiness skills. Suitable’s platform makes it easy and fun for students to engage on campus and throughout the Bucks County community.
Life with Suitable
BCCC’s Bucks+ program would not be where it is today without Suitable’s built-in competency framework and digital badging system. BCCC determines its competencies by aligning them with those of Temple University’s Fox School of Business, one of their largest transfer partners. This makes for a seamless integration with Temple’s student success system. Digital badges are based on college initiatives, programming and student development efforts that fall within the different competency categories. During COVID-19, Bucks+ introduced a self-care badge that involved completing activities or attending events that promoted personal well-being, such as participating in meditation or watching a TED Talk about the importance of self care. An incentive for completing more badges include priority access to special events or opportunities.
Suitable also offers the capability to create pop-up badges, such as the New Student Orientation badge. While students are at new student orientation, they are encouraged to download the Suitable app to complete this badge and start being acquainted with campus. The badge walks students through the steps of scanning the QR code and writing a reflection to evaluate the orientation. From here, all students are exposed to Suitable again in their required first-year experience course. Several touchpoints that use Suitable are built right into the course, so all students are required to download the application and complete the course’s activities.
In addition to digital badges and competencies, Bucks+ has increased student retention with Suitable by leveraging the calendar of events, leaderboard and Co-Curricular Transcripts. On Suitable, students have access to the full calendar of events, field trips, and more – all at the touch of their fingertips. Especially being a 100% commuter campus, prior knowledge of the events helps students plan in advance when they need to stay on campus. Suitable’s platform also displays different leaderboards that help motivate and inspire students to continue engaging. Finally, Suitable’s Co-Curricular Transcripts are a way for students to showcase their college experience. When interviewing for a job or applying to transfer to another university, the Co-Curricular Transcript is something students can use to articulate their learning and development.
Take a look at the accomplishments of the Bucks+ Program at Bucks County Community College
- A student engagement rate of 50% up from 6%
- 8,882 activities completed in one academic year, across 6,113 students
- A 86% increase in student engagement with the career services department
Additional Outcomes Achieved
Not only has student engagement improved, but student retention has too. Since partnering with Suitable, the team at BCCC has refined and scaled the Bucks+ program, gathering best practices, data and insights along the way. They are focused on retaining their students by extracting the data available on Suitable. In AY 21-22, BCCC discovered that completing just one activity through Bucks+ boosted retention over 14%. If students completed 5 activities, that retention rate skyrocketed to 95%.
