The education sector is facing unprecedented challenges as institutions globally have had to adapt to functioning and move much of their delivery online. Technology plays a massive role in supporting the education sector as a whole, not only in teaching, learning and evolving curriculums, but also, how students communicate with their peers, teaching staff and their education provider.
At NESCOT College, a further and higher education college in the UK use an institutional branded app NESCOMMS daily and three quarters of all student comms are sent via the app which uses Tribal’s Engage app technology. We had a chat with the teams and asked them 'what sort of comms are you posting?'…
Download the Tribal Engage Brochure: Communication and collaboration in the hands of your students
Andry Waters, the College’s Curriculum and Standards Coordinator smiled,
"My posts vary from good vibe quotes, especially round exam times, to links that help with their revision. The app is on their phones so it's so easy to use and the possibilities are endless. Students will often message on group chats, start debates, ask questions etc. Communication has massively improved. Obviously, there's time restrictions on it - students know that they can ask me questions at a weekend but know I won't reply until the Monday!"
Adam Beral, Director of Faculty, gave us a recent example of his posts,
"I use NESCOMMS (Student Engage supported app) to increase motivation to students. I focus on boosting attendance and reminding students about College rules, for example, we just sent a picture of a Capybara (an animal similar to a Guinea Pig) wearing a College lanyard, to the animal studies students, reminding them to wear their lanyards at all times. Doing it in this way is a bit of fun but it grabs their attention more than a stuffy and serious email."
Ollie Reid, NESCOT's Events and Social Media Coordinator told us,
"I post about our activity timetable, changes happening in College, events coming up, offers in the canteen, as well as surveys to get feedback and make sure our content is right for our students and written in a way that gets them to take action. We'll always try and engage with the students, breakdown barriers and try and keep things as light and friendly as possible to make comms as accessible as possible."
Zoe Brown, Head of Department for Animal Studies, explained,
"We upload all different types of media - we all have animal personas on the app - I'm Henry the Cat! It makes us seem more approachable; a student might not listen to a difficult message from me but they are more willing if Henry the Cat says it. The app helps us with a blended and reverse learning approach, we can add resources in the app and bring it into the classroom. I encourage all the teaching staff to use the app, it's such an easy tool to use and allows us all to be diverse in the resources that we use."
If you have found this blog post of interest take a look at the rest the blogs in our mobile app series:
A Mobile App for education: Improving communications through a college app
A mobile app for education: Using app communication to reduce anxiety
A mobile app for education: Using an app for a slick enrolment process
