BubbleBlog

Check out some of the results from the pilot:

Our Pilot Process

Implement, setup and customize our web and mobile app with categorized Bubbles (groups) to match the organization of Student Life and student group needs.

Execute two weekly focus group meetings over a three week span with freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors and Student Life staff with various levels of leadership experience.

Conduct training sessions to review administrative tools to measure, monitor, and control the platform in order to create time savings and better results from Student Life operations.

Goals For The Pilot

Consistent usage and effective transfer of information

Student engagement and excitement

Product versatility (helpful, fun, and familiar)

Data (collected through May 11, 2015)

Before Pilot: 26% agree

After Pilot: 74% agree

Tangible Success

Saves Time: Student Life Staff communicated directly to students via push notifications about the pilot meetings in order to maximize attendance quickly. In addition, Bubble allowed students to communicate directly among themselves to decrease dependency on Student Life office resources.

Potential Cost Savings: Campus Bubble eliminates the need for Point University to independently develop a mobile app potentially costing $100,000+.

Improved Operations: Increased awareness of events and a stronger sense of belonging might impact student retention and increase the utilization of facilities and programming.

A Quote From Pilot Participant:

“...many students would say that we don't have things to do here but we clearly do. It's just a matter of communicating the information to others. If we can do that, then we'll see better outcomes of the events that we do have here.”

Interested in learning more?

Contact me with any questions, and I will be happy to finish the conversation.

And stand out, we did! We used the bubble machine to gain attention of passersby. Several people stopped to ask, “What’s the bubble machine for?” or “What do you guys do with bubbles?”.

It was a great conversation starter. And we had several valuable conversations with lots of incredible people.

Educators from all over the country willingly discussed their challenges when it comes to communication with students. Conversation after conversation yielded the same painful responses:

“Students don't read email”

“Students don't look at flyers”

“It's hard to keep up on the 7-8 other social networks out there that students check.”

We were able to offer our solution to centralize information and communicate to students the way they prefer to communicate today - through mobile and social media. Many agreed that Campus Bubble would work for their challenging situations.

Through those conversations, we made lasting impressions and made a commitment to stay connected after the conference. Since then, we have continued our dialogue with the wonderful people we met.

Like our bubble machine, Campus Bubble is a great way to initialize conversation in an academic setting. We understand the importance of student communication and community engagement, and have a great perspective from which we can help face those challenges head on.

So how can you, as an educational professional, help them succeed?

The answer is to facilitate a sense of community for them. As a non-traditional student, myself, I would highly recommend the following:

1. Provide a forum for non-traditional students to communicate together.

Giving non-traditional students, like me a central place to share ideas, resources, struggles and solutions will strengthen community. As a result, students will discover ways to maintain a balanced lifestyle.

I enrolled into an online graduate program because of the age gap between traditional graduate students and me. Besides that, I also have a lot going on. I have a full time job. I’m highly active in my church. I just got married. And we just adopted a very cute, but very high maintenance puppy. It’s calming to know that there are others around me who are experiencing similar challenges. I don’t celebrate their struggles. It just gives me a sense that I’m not alone.

2. Encourage high student engagement.

A student’s conflicting demands on his or her time for activities like work, attending class, parenting, and other obligations is challenging; so of course adding “campus life” to the mix may sound counterproductive. However, as many know, engagement is key to student retention, especially among non-traditional students.

Studies show that students who contribute actively to their educational environments are more likely to succeed in college. These experiences include:

Learning communities

Service-learning

Organization and event participation

Undergraduate research

Make communication accessible with a central destination for community events like Campus Bubble. Give students something to do outside of the classroom to generate interest and motivation. As a non-traditional student, some great opportunities that I would appreciate include the ability to instantly collaborate with other students in my classes, keeping abreast of interesting events on and off campus, and the option to join and participate with student organizations with virtual accessibility. These enhancements help the balancing act because they contribute to my success as student.

3. Helping non-traditional students feel “a sense of belonging”

Effective two-way communication and interaction between the student and school is a brilliant way to satisfy one of our most essential human needs: belonging. Show students that they are a valued member of your institution by keeping them abreast what’s going on, and offer ways for them to interact with members of the administration, staff and student body.

I am inspired by Emory Bubble’s “Ask Dean Moon” group which includes the ability to chat directly with the dean and see news from others. And I’m always impressed with those that actually respond and offer ways to help. If only I could connect with people who could make a difference in my educational well-being as part of my online degree.

4. Make it easy.

After undergrad, I took 10 years off to focus on building my career and starting a family. Now, as a 30 plus graduate student (depending on what day it is, that number seems closer to 40), I know firsthand the difficulties of fitting into a culture that caters to 18-24 year olds. Communication plays a big part of me fitting in. Besides learning how to have a full text conversation with emoticons and acronyms, I am now very savvy in social media. And I am not alone. Studies show that 95% of everyone online is on social media. It’s a primary way to communicate.

Providing a platform that is simple, yet organized and speaks to the way we communicate today will make it easy for students, like me, to stay connected. With Campus Bubble, for example, users can:

Post statuses and events

“Like/heart” and comment on others’ posts

Direct message other users

“Share” with others

Receive push notifications directly to their mobile phones.

It mirrors the social media engagement that we’re used to, while at the same time facilitates an academic environment and a great sense of community - all in one place.

I would love to chat with you more about my experiences. Feel free to reach out to me for more insight from a non-traditional student’s perspective.

Kaye Curry, Campus Bubble [email protected]

Would you give the keys to a brand new Ferrari to a 13-year-old with no driving lessons and say, “have fun”.

Um…. No!

Teach safe social networking behavior through experiential education.

Teach students about the dangers of unsafe personal information sharing to prepare them for exposure to dangerous personalities on public social networks.

We provide a mobile application solution for K-8 schools to allow their students to practice responsible digital citizenship while increasing extracurricular participation at school.

Monitor student progress and quickly identify when teachable moments arise.

Allow students to understand the illusion of online privacy and proactively report cyber-bullying.

Teach students about the dangers of unsafe personal information sharing to prepare them for exposure to dangerous personalities on public social networks.

Make it easy and fun for students to be involved.

Students will engage because the design mirrors existing social networks.

Use Bubble to promote extracurricular student engagement.

Connect and engage students and educators within a safe community environment. Spread information effectively and efficiently.

30 day money back guarantee. Try it now for free:

https://demo.campusbubble.com

username: principal

password: 12345

Nir Lev

The avg. yield rate has been steadily declining year over year since the early 2000s

Nearly 30% of incoming freshmen submit 7 or more applications

With Campus Bubble, Admissions professionals have a private online community for the incoming class.

Gain insights and accelerate likelihood of deposit.

_ “…the Freshmen engagement process is key and connecting Freshmen with their interests is an excellent idea. From our prior experiences at Tech, there is an issue with student engagement from the very start…. so connecting [incoming students] via Campus Bubble social networking is an excellent solution.”_

Dr. Patrick McHenry, School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology

How Admissions takes advantage of Campus Bubble to meet enrollment goals:

Effectively portray your existing school community by allowing prospective students to find their personal areas of interest in your branded, private social network.

Facilitate authentic student-to-prospect interaction in a controllable online environment that mirrors the most popular social networks used by teens on a daily basis.

Quickly identify the most engaged prospects to qualify “good-fit students” for early decision / early admissions efforts by observing real-time usage and back-end data analytics.

Join our exclusive pilot program! Contact us today for a free 15-minute demo and to discuss customized solutions for your school.

After we wrote the business plan in an entrepreneurship class, we later received an investment from Emory University as the first and only undergraduate venture to ever do so.  We graduated, received our first payment, and so began the most difficult, rewarding, and educational year of our lives.

We held focus group after focus group, continuing to meet with faculty, staff, and administration. We experienced and executed on our first contract negotiation, our first capital raise, our first attempt at a product launch, and we were only two months in.  There were times in the Emory negotiation that both sides were ready to walk away from the table.  But we insisted - and it paid off.  Our partnership has turned our student project between friends to a full-fledged, investor-backed company.  

Your student organization deserves recognition and exposure. But, to get these things, your organization must make a good first impression and communicate a clear message. What is your org about? Why is that important? What do I get by being a member? Promoting your organization starts with understanding your audience and developing a brand.

Here are a few tips to get started:

 1. Fine-tune your brand

A brand is not just your logo or your name. Your brand reflects your organization’s culture, mission and dictates what kind of first impression you’ll make on prospective members.

Think about who your target audience is and the kind of student that you organization attracts. Your brand and marketing materials should speak the language of the this person. Robot club? Embrace the nerdy, technical nature of your members. Business Club? Emphasize networking, business attire, and internships. Art club? Be creative, whimsical and colorful in your branding.

 Decide on your organization's values. What is it trying to accomplish? Write out a simple mission statement and base your marketing language around this. Whether you're all about making a difference on campus, waking up early on weekends to volunteer or just having fun with like-minded people, make sure your brand reflects that.

Your organization's brand sets the tone for all forms of promotion. It is the first impression and a mark of pride and belonging for current members.

  2. Start a blog

Compared to a static website, a blog can accomplish a lot more for your members and for promoting events and information for your organization. Easily gather followers and give real-time updates. Consider networks like Tumblr where content can be shared virally and where users are accustomed to looking for new blogs.

Once you’ve set up your organization’s blog, promote it by pushing it through social channels. Focus on addressing a readership of current members and potential members. Share pictures, gifs, and easy-to-consume media. Make sure to use the voice you established for your brand.

With the Social Digest tool, you can even convert your posts into an email newsletter and send updates straight to your followers’ inboxes.

   3. Take social media seriously

Social media is very easy to undervalue, especially on Facebook where your organization's page updates don’t reach many members. Yet students are consistently spending time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and others. There are two approaches for getting the best use of your organization's social profiles.

The first is to designate a social media chair for your organization whose only job is to vigilantly post, tweet and retweet on every profile as needed. The upside here is having a human touch on your social profiles and the luxury of reacting to trends as they happen. The downside is the time and energy commitment.

The second approach is to use a tool like Hootsuite to integrate all of your organization’s profiles and schedule posts. Tools like Hootsuite allow you to create posts that highlight updates to your  blog or upcoming events and schedule them so they appear on each profile over several weeks. The upside here is that less time is spent paying attention to social media and yet good content is being delivered. The downside is that your profiles will not be as reactive to engagement from followers or trending topics.

  4. On-the-ground marketing

Nothing beats an in-person interaction, and marketing to students in real-life remains the best way to gain exposure. Students are more likely to join your organization if they get an idea of who’s involved and what the vibe is. For this reason, it is important to make sure your org’s on-the-ground presence is strong and consistent.

Begin by setting a budget for your marketing materials. T-shirts, though expensive, can be a great way to self-identify your org and its members while being a coveted giveaway item. A handout flyer can also be a great way to inform potential members and quickly promote your org to many people. Marketing “swag” like stickers, bottle openers, and sunglasses are also effective examples of giveaway items.

Being present at activity fairs, chalking your event announcements on concrete in high-traffic pedestrian areas around campus, holding interest meetings and co-sponsoring events with other organizations are all great ways to gain exposure as well. But, make sure that your on-the-ground efforts have a clear call to action: At the activity fair, the focus is signing up potential members, while at the interest meeting might be all about providing lots of context and information and making potential members feel comfortable and excited about joining.

5. Bring Campus Bubble to your school

Even with all the varied methods of communication, useful tools and marketing swag, it remains difficult for student organizations to keep up with their members and promote their activities to the rest of campus. Large, open networks like Facebook and Twitter appeal to everyone and are full of noise and distraction. While it remains important for your organization to have a presence on those networks, your content will always be competing with family, friends, celebrities, and everything else. Moreover, no one goes to Facebook and Twitter to find information about their school or join student organizations.

That’s why we created Campus Bubble. Finally, a place for your academic identity unfettered by distraction, built for students by students. Easily create a Bubble for your organization and add your members to begin sharing events and media. Make your Bubble open and expose your events and content to the rest of campus. Grow a base a followers and send updates to their phones in real time. Campus Bubble is school-exclusive and highly specialized for college needs.

Students at college campuses want a better way to communicate:

+ Facebook is a distraction and can hurt student success

+ Facebook is no longer an effective way to get the word out

+ There is no centralized, campus-based social network for two-way interactions between students and their professors or administrators

  If your group is frustrated with using Facebook to promote its events and activities, it may be time to kick the habit completely and start using something more local to your campus community.

  Could Campus Bubble be an effective alternative?

  Your student government association may be in a position to help your organization and other organizations on campus. But, take some time to plan things out first:

  Step 1: Talk to your friends, classmates and fellow student leaders about their experiences:

+ Do students want a private social network for academic and campus groups?

+ Do groups want to promote events and collaborate through a mobile app?

  Step 2: Identify your student government association’s goals and priorities:

+ Is there a focus on increasing student participation at events

+ Is there a desire to make the student body more aware of SGA efforts

+ What are SGA members concerned about? What are they excited about?

+ Would the campus administration support an SGA initiative to improve communication or would they resist because of an existing effort?

  Step 3: Take action

  If SGA wants us, we will take care of the rest!

+  We will launch an app customized for your school as soon as we can

+  We provide marketing materials and guidance

+ We will always be free for students

+ Click here to learn about how we do it

+ Click here to contact us and schedule a demo

    What Student Leaders are Saying:

  “Campus Bubble has the potential to not only strengthen communication on a student2student and student2faculty level but the Bubble can help cultivate a sense of culture between all four of our campuses.“

  – Hugh Stephens, President, University of North Georgia - Dahlonega Student Government Association

    Let’s make it as easy as copy and paste:

    Subject: Promoting student group communication

CC: “Nir Levy” <[email protected]>

  Dear __________,

  I am a [freshman / sophomore / junior / senior] at [college/university] and I want to be more involved in my campus community.

  As a student leader, I know how important it can be for campus organizations to be able to communicate effectively with their members and potential members. I recently learned about Campus Bubble, a technology startup that makes private social networks for college and universities. Unlike other social networks out there, Campus Bubble was founded by students for students and is designed to help drive student engagement from orientation to graduation and beyond.

  Because they received funding from Emory University, Campus Bubble provides its apps for free upon request by SGA. They work with qualifying schools in order to replace the multiple communication channels in use now to help groups communicate and collaborate. I know that, even for SGA, reaching certain goals can be a challenge, but I also believe that Campus Bubble can help.

  I have cc’d Nir Levy, one of the co-founders of Campus Bubble. I’m sure he would be excited to hear from you and happy to present an overview. Nir can be reached at 404-984-4781.

  Thank you for considering this opportunity to make the [college/university] experience even better than it already is.

  Sincerely,

Creating opportunities for students to work one-on-one with faculty is also difficult:

There is consensus on how to define and measure success

There is no way to target students with genuine need and execute on a large scale

Professor hours and one-on-one time is unique to the college experience. As Professor Rider pointed out, although accessibility and responsiveness by faculty is important for academic excellence, expensive resources can easily go to waste.

Unfortunately, there is no simple solution. For students, especially the freshman class, asking for help is intimidating. Professors give grades and lecture the class and the students that need office hours the most tend to be the least likely to come in for office hours. Many students turn to teaching assistants (if they’re available at all) because TAs are closer in age and less difficult to communicate with. Students are encouraged to approach faculty but many do not.

As a blogger from University Language Services pointed out, “Many freshmen are uncertain or shy about utilizing a professor’s office hours. Don’t let that be you!”

Some professors provide incentives such as extra points just for showing up to office hours. Others are tired of seeing the same faces at office hours and need more time to focus on their research and class preparation.

Interested in other ways that colleges and universities promote student success in class and enhance student retention efforts? This chart below, based on research by the Human Capital Research Corporation, lists undergraduate learning priorities:

If you are doubting the effectiveness of your office hours, ask yourself these questions:

Are your office hours attended by the students that need it most?

Do you proactively invite high-risk students to your office hours?

Do you answer questions by email during your set office hours?

Do you answer the same questions repeatedly?

Do you mandate an office hour visit for all of your students at the beginning of the semester? Why?

Do you use a class-wide online communication tool for soliciting questions, posting answers, and sharing resources?

Do you communicate with students the way they prefer to communicate or do you instruct students to communicate your way?

Do you take advantage of social media to interact with students?  

Want to take a closer look at the research? We used public research for this blog posts and the materials are all organized in this Google Docs folder.

  1. Emphasize student learning as the metric for success

An internal proposal at Western Michigan University articulates the following key questions for assessing the impact that a student affairs division can have on student learning:

+ What are we trying to do and why are we doing it?

+ What do we expect the student to know or do as a result of our program (or activity)?

+ How well are we doing it?

+ How do we know?

+ How do we use the information to improve?

+ Does that work?

    2. Provide student leaders with resources to help with scheduling, event promotion, and follow-up

In her graduate thesis “Impact of Extracurricular Activities on Students,” Nikki L. Wilson concludes that “schools that offer training for leaders may minimize the harsh effects of poor leadership in extracurricular activities.”

  Cydney Pollard, a rising sophomore at Jacksonville State University, told us, “people sign up for things but they don't commit because a lot of times there are not scheduled meetings or there is no follow up.” At JSU, the freshman retention rate is 67 percent.

    3. Dialogue with new students about the temptation to overcommit

Student-to-administrator and student-to-faculty interactions promote student success. 

Middlesex Community College designed and implemented these targeted interventions:

+ An all-college professional day

+ A Strategic Planning Working Group

+ The Pathways Center

+ Achievement coaches

  The American Educational Research Association’s study, “Bridge or Barrier: The Impact of Social Media on Engagement for First-generation College Students,” concludes that “results suggest that social media use is significantly related to increased connections with faculty and the quality of relationships with students and staff on campus.”

    4. Monitor student involvement participation and share data with at-risk students

Consider providing students with a real-time student organization portal that is mobile-friendly. For existing activities, allow students to see who is going and who is in what groups. Furthermore, motivate students to lead by allowing them to self-organize.

  Hamza Khan at Ryerson University in Canada spoke to me about the importance of promoting self-guided student experiences: 

  “[This means] discovering their own organization, finding what events [there are], finding out what they are going to do outside the classroom and a useful way to track that.

  I have presented a theory of student development, labeled the Student Involvement Theory... According to the theory, the greater the student’s involvement in college, the greater will be the amount of student learning and personal development. From the standpoint of the educator, the most important hypothesis in the theory is that the effectiveness of any educational policy or practice is directly related to the capacity of that policy or practice to increase student involvement.”

  (Student Involvement: A Developmental Theory for Higher Education, Alexander W. Astin)

    5. Create and market targeted campaigns to promote self-efficacy among minority groups

In “Intervention to Improve Engineering Self-Efficacy and Sense of Belonging of First-Year Engineering Students,” Ohio State University doctoral candidate Kari L. Jordan discusses the lack of academic success among minorities at one university’s college of engineering. Jordan concluded that “underrepresented students had lower feeling of inclusion/sense of belonging than white students. Per Walton and Cohen (2007), belonging uncertainty can lead to racial disparities in achievement.” 

  Consider these ideas:

+ Share videos to first-year students that highlight past success of minority students

+ Proactively invite underrepresented students to groups and meet-ups where they can get to know each other

+ Establish a common language and common definitions for terms like “learning community,” “sanctioned student organization,” and “ad-hoc groups”

+ Allow students to have input over policy in order to encourage civil debate around controversial issues. A culture of transparency allows students to take ownership over campus culture rather than resent administrators

 1. Filmmakers Have to be Effective Communicators

From pre- to post-production, people rely on filmmakers to share information that is vital to project success. Filmmakers must also be able to communicate their vision or direction in a way that everyone can understand. 

  2. Filmmakers are Used to Solving Problems

Filmmakers know that there are a lot of different ways to tie a knot, position a camera, plug in a mic or hang up a backdrop, and when things go wrong during the filmmaking process (as they often do), we know how to find a better way in order to make the final product successful.

  3. Filmmakers Know How to Manage the Clock

Time is money; we know that because we’re usually the ones who made the budget. Consequently, we have to make sure everything is done as efficiently as possible in order to keep the production on track.

    4. Filmmakers are Organized

Between the on-set crew, grips, DPs, ADs, best boys, caterers, MUAs, actors, stunt men and women, dollies, cranes, reds, babies, 5Ks and 10Ks, there’s a lot to keep track of in order to keep the production machine running smoothly (notice I haven’t even mentioned the post-production process).

  5. Filmmakers Have Technical Proficiency

New technology enters the filmmaking field every day, and we must be able to learn and adapt as innovations become available. It’s okay though, because we love learning and being able to experiment with a new camera, computer, or piece of software.

    6. Filmmakers Understand the Importance of Team Work

There are a lot of different personalities on set (and in pre/post production), and clashes are bound to happen at some point. From the filmmaker’s point of view, it doesn’t matter: We are all a team and need to work together for a common goal - successful project completion. 

  7. Filmmakers Know How to Keep the Team Together

Filmmakers have an innate ability to see the final product (call it clairvoyance). It’s important. 

  8. Filmmakers Understand the Business Side, Too

Our budgets are just as important as our production schedules: People’s time costs money. Equipment costs money. Food costs money. Basically, everything costs money, and somebody has to pay for it. Plus, we want to eat.

  9. Filmmakers are Creative

I think this goes without saying: We make cool stuff.

The premise is promising. Build a following where students already spend their time. Upload GIFs, retweet, and create cross-department hastags. Effective on paper, but in practice? Not really.

  Let's take a look at how Facebook and Twitter profiles aren't really that good at engaging students. Hint: it's all about context and real-time reach.

1. Incoming freshman don't use Facebook and Twitter

Even Facebook has admitted that the next generation of college students don’t spend much (if any) time on Facebook. Instead, sites like Instagram, Kik, Snapchat, WhatsApp and others are taking over as incoming students find Facebook and Twitter to be increasingly irrelevant. The emergence of niche networks like Instagram and YikYak give users access to even smaller, more engaged circles of friends as an alternative to endless updates from distant acquaintances. Your department’s Facebook pages and Twitter profiles will soon (if not already) reach only a tiny percentage of incoming freshmen.  

2. Your content is lost in a sea of distraction

Facebook and Twitter can be difficult places to promote your brand. New reports say brand engagement has plummeted by 44% on Facebook. How can your department expect to have the attention of students when your content is competing with Conan O’Brien, close friends, and Mom? On Facebook and Twitter, your department is one of thousands of profiles with national brands, influence, and followers. When a student logs in, how likely are they to discover your department’s resources and services when #WorldCup2014 is trending worldwide and taking over everyone’s news feeds? Your department would thrive in a university-exclusive network where students are going precisely for university-specific content, rather than because they noticed it in the periphery. 

3. Facebook and Twitter is not for academic identity

Be honest: do you log in to Facebook or Twitter to check in with your colleagues or see what students are up to? No way. These networks have become a way to keep tabs on friends and family, or maybe to catch up on trending news. Yet, every day, you also engage in a real-life, living, breathing physical community: the university. Your campus is entirely unique; its people even more so. So, why isn’t there a network that captures the specific idiosyncrasies and personality of your university where your department can have the influence and reach it deserves?

Facebook and Twitter are broad, public, worldwide networks where, in theory, everyone has a voice. But in practice, you only have a voice if you’re posting memes and pithy quotes targeted at the common denominator of internet users. For this exact reason, there has been a rise in niched-social networks where users can tend to their location, career or interest-specific identities. To be most effective, your department needs to have a presence on a niche network that is exclusive to your university.

So, what's next?

We built Campus Bubble to address these shortcomings in modern social media sites. We believe your university and your department deserve a network where users can engage in their academic identities, look for university-exclusive information, and share content with their peers.