As you prepare to welcome your student population back to campus this coming fall, you might be thinking about the best ways to manage a safe return to campus life, while staying mindful to a lot of unknowns.

The new semester will continue to include virtual and hybrid programming as a way to promote safety compliance and also to bring in different types of experiences that are not yet possible with in-person programming.

If we’ve learned nothing else in the last year, we now understand on a deep level that plans and priorities can change very quickly, and we don’t always know what to expect. Campus administrators leading fall restart strategies have creatively adapted, innovated and iterated. Key takeaway: Be ready to adapt, and have a reserve plan in place for times when situations suddenly shift.

Fall 2021 restart presents an opportunity to take what was successful last year and merge it with processes that were successful in the past to enhance and elevate campus life to new heights! Leveraging technology in your back to school strategies offers new and necessary flexibility as well as the ability to customize programming to fit your campus’ unique needs.

Check out some different ways that implementing technologies in your fall restart plan can help kickstart a 2021 Return To Normal. (Or rather, a new and better normal! 😉)

1. Create Virtual and Hybrid Events

Keep students engaged whether on- or off-campus by including online and remote-inclusive programming in addition to in-person events.

For events happening on campus, help ensure social distancing guidelines are met by making event registrations mandatory and limiting the number of registrations available based on space availability and local regulations.

This way, only the appropriate number of people can access tickets for a particular event space. Consider offering a virtual ticket option to accommodate more attendees to join online, or create a seat assignment system with a slot management tool to keep track of who was seated next to whom during events and classes.

Another opportunity that emerges from virtual event settings is expanding students’ access to speaker events. Videoconferencing opens up limitless opportunities for your students to learn from and connect with industry thought leaders by bringing in top speakers from all over the world who would not normally be able to come to campus.

2. Download Contact Tracing Reports

Enforce event registrations and mandatory attendance tracking for all on-campus events. Centralizing your attendance data enables you to generate real-time contact tracing reports to identify who could have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID. In just a few clicks, access a full list of all contacts a person encountered during events they attended within a given time range.

3. Enable Touchless Attendance Tracking

Now that many schools will be attempting a “normal” or hybrid year, it’s more important than ever to collect and track attendance data and metrics in order to ensure safety at on-campus events and gatherings and to measure success of in-person, hybrid and virtual events. With attendance tracking technology you can set a limit on how many attendees are allowed to attend an in-person event and know when your event has reached capacity in real-time.

Implement no-touch attendance tracking with a QR code scanning system. Allow students to self-check in without having to touch any screens or keys, through your campus engagement app or by allowing students to simply scan a QR code posted on a wall or door to sign in or out of the event, or share it on a screen at virtual events. To make it easy for students who are not logged into your system on their phones, or who are accessing your event on a laptop, share a check-in link on your videoconferencing tool’s chat they can simply click to sign in.

4. Open Testing Stations

A safe return to campus during the uncertainties of the COVID pandemic may require continued safety protocols such as regular COVID testing among students, faculty and staff.

Create an entire process for on-campus COVID-testing including stations, scheduling, reminders and test attendance tracking. Let students select a testing station and choose an available timeslot, send automated mobile and email reminders, and manage lines in real-time, maintaining social distancing regulations and offering redirection to under-utilized stations to make events safe and efficient.

To accommodate rapid processing that may be required, implement card swiping technology at testing centers to check in folks as they arrive. This allows you to keep track of overall compliance, access critical testing data and generate reports anytime.

5. Utilize Surveys for Daily Health Check-Ins

Organize daily health screening for faculty, students and employees to safely enter buildings or know if they can come to campus. Build a survey to create a daily health and safety check-in that students can access on their phone, tablet or computer, allowing them to self-report on symptom questions. Checklists allow administrators to track daily responses and campus security to review survey responses as people enter campus or buildings, and prevent flagged people from attending on-campus events or class.

Virtual Survey tools offer the ability to customize questions and workflow logics to meet the unique needs and processes of your campus. Surveys and Live Polling are also great ways to engage students online and gather feedback to assess program outcomes in other areas of campus life, too.

6. Include Virtual Orientation Programming to Welcome Students

Create a warm, welcoming and engaging transition experience for your incoming students, whether in-person or online, on the quad, at home, or on the go. Virtual Student Orientations offer students an immersive experience, curated by you!

Connect students and their families to important resources such as programs and schedules and allow your attendees to register to events online and access QR codes for virtual check-ins. Track attendance during orientation sessions, and create accessible communication channels for new students and parents to connect with faculty or staff members, orientation leaders, international students and other new students.

Create checklists to guide students on an engaging and interactive track of requirements, building in methods of accountability such as mandatory quizzes, reflections and other pre-work, while mapping progress for students to follow as they meet key milestones.

7. Facilitate One-on-One and Group Meetings

Create opportunities for students to easily meet with advisors, faculty members, clubs, tutors, mentors and more, either virtually or in-person. Allow advisors and faculty to set up their own meeting schedulers for students to easily book a timeslot that works for them.

A virtual lounge or meeting space is also great way for campus leaders or faculty to host small groups and for students to meet their peers, make new social and emotional connections or even meet with a study group that is unable to meet in person.

8. Host a Virtual Involvement Fair

Help students discover groups and ways to get involved, even remotely. Designing a Virtual Student Involvement Fair makes it easy, engaging and convenient for students to learn about co-curricular activities on campus and join organizations that interest them.

Virtual Fairs allow campus department and student group leaders to set up a unique customizable booth to help students to learn about their organization and mission and share introduction videos, photos, files and more. They can also set up virtual rooms for one-on-one or a group chat for prospective members to interact with club members and officers. Virtual Fairs also automates matching by suggesting clubs to students based on their interests and preferred industries.

All attendee data is tracked in real time, making it quick and easy to pull reports, review engagement after the fair, and enable student club officers to reach out to everyone who visited or expressed interest in their booth.

Engagement Tips:

To help students feel supported in a virtual setting, host an information booth for quick answers to their questions.
Incentivize students to get active by offering prizes, such as being entered to win a prize if you visit 10 booths.
Any of your campus fairs (such as Resource Fairs, Greek Life, Career Fairs, Volunteer, and Study Abroad) can easily be adapted to a virtual format.

9. Adapt Move-In Processes

Typically, move-in involves MANY people gathering in one space, so with COVID restrictions, this can be a big restart pain point that needs to be managed effectively. Some campuses are implementing new processes for move-in to cut down the number of people in each building at a given time. Use event registration software to manage the entire move-in process, assigning people check-in times and only allowing certain people registered for that timeslot to enter a building.

Create events for different shifts, and assign staff across campus to work them, checking people in, keeping track of who is arriving, and helping ensure compliance for a smooth, safe and efficient move-in for everyone, with plenty of elbow room to maintain distancing requirements.

Depending on a campus’ particular regulations, some schools have implemented temperature screenings and health questionnaires for each person involved in the process (such as students and move-in staff and helpers).

10. Promote Campus Traditions

With myriad restrictions to on-campus activity and in-person events last academic year, meaningful campus traditions have been disrupted, and newer and incoming students don’t necessarily know about them. Students may have lost the continuity of the school year without the ability to connect much yet with upperclassmen to help carry those traditions forward (or even develop new traditions).

Get connected! Communicating about the enriching traditions of your campus lets students know what makes your school and culture unique.

Adapt some traditions to online or hybrid event formats to make them more accessible for the entire community, and encourage campus life leaders and club officers to utilize technical communication tools such as email/newsletters, online event management software, campus-wide news feed, mobile app push notifications and chat to help get the word out to newer students about what’s happening around them and how they can get involved and become an active part of the campus community.

11. Connect with Students and Families

A lot of folks are anxious about the uncertainties and unexpected changes that may arise this fall, especially incoming freshmen (and their parents!) Developing an easy way to keep them up to date is key to making sure everyone feels students are safe and supported on campus.

Facilitate clear communication with students and families about what is happening on campus, and share critical COVID strategies and current protocols. Let students know about programming guidelines and expectations, and create a comprehensive and accessible knowledgebase of information and resources that students and families can review at their convenience, as often as they would like.

12. Connect Students with On-Campus Jobs

Campuses who have lost some of their student workers during the pause in on-campus activity will be starting to hire for on-campus positions again. Utilize a system that allows you to post job openings to connect students with these professional, resume-building opportunities that are right at their doorstep.

Manage everything in one place! Let campus departments post their available jobs on a campus-wide job board and allow students to browse open positions, bookmark them and easily submit applications online, using calendar synchronization to schedule interviews with students.

From facilitating clear communications, to fostering connections, to managing and assessing program outcomes, leveraging technology in your fall restart strategies makes campus life more accessible and inclusive, more engaging, and more adaptable for quick changes, opening up endless opportunities for you to shape enriching new student experiences.

Remote-inclusive programming is here to stay, and implementing and integrating technology skills into your current processes truly expands the breadth of possibilities for higher education professionals to amplify their work and outreach.

Are you interested in learning more about using CampusGroups to support your fall restart strategies? Contact us for more information or to set up a demo and tell us about your campus. We’d love to hear from you!

Request a demo

Featured