Overview

Johns Hopkins University (JHU) has been a CampusGroups (CG) partner since July 2020. The campus engagement software was first implemented by the Homewood and Peabody campuses. A year later the community platform was rolled out university wide.

About JHU

JHU was founded in 1876 as America’s first research university. Spread over nine campuses and three continents, JHU has over 30,000 students, including over 20,000 graduate students. Based in Baltimore, Maryland, Homewood is the university’s main campus and home to two major undergraduate schools.

Challenges prior to CG implementation

Prior to launching Campus Groups, JHU had multiple instances of the same student involvement platform. One for each of its nine campuses. The main challenges with the previous system were:

Segmented View of Campus Life- Under the previous set-up things were very siloed. Each campus had its own separate instance. Therefore, students did not have visibility into what was happening university wide. This meant that interaction across campuses was very limited.
Lack of System Integration- The technological environment at JHU is complex. With multiple schools and systems, there was a need to communicate between schools and systems. The previous system did not enable such integration.
Inability to Generate Valuable Engagement Data- Prior to CG, it was difficult to get involvement figures from other JHU campuses or pull university-wide stats. This underlined the importance of having a comprehensive platform with robust tracking and reporting capabilities.

Solutions provided by CG implementation

JHU needed an all-in-one community engagement platform. Due to the university’s structure, the system also had to be highly customizable. According to Calvin Smith, JHU’s Director of Student Leadership and Involvement, “CG provided JHU with the solutions it needed in one place”. These include:

Multi Community Hub Campus Portal- This feature has enabled the implementation of a comprehensive platform university wide. It has also enabled each of the nine campuses to have its own Community Hub.
Through the (“Hopkins Groups”) portal, students are now connected across campuses. The centralized calendar and news feed has given students the ability to “take part in co-curricular activities and events they didn’t know about before”, said Calvin.
Highly Customizable Platform- This has enabled each campus to create a custom landing page and menu. They can therefore establish their own unique brand and send targeted communications to students.
Creating a personalized experience for students and administrators has helped nurture a sense of belonging among students. It has also fostered higher and better-quality engagement.
Multiple Engagement Tools- CG serves as a one-stop-shop for co-curricular life at JHU. Available on the web and mobile, the platform has over 30 modules. These include group and event management, attendance tracking and gamification.
“Having so many features in one place has been a game changer”, said Calvin. As a result, the university has been able to sunset providers for website creation, events, and budgeting, resulting in cost savings.
Robust Tracking and Reporting Features- What makes the platform extremely powerful is that all data feeds into an analytics and reporting dashboard. According to Calvin, “from a visibility or statistical standpoint, this has been transformational.”
“Tracking and reporting features enable us to analyze overall platform use. They also allow us to pull stats for each individual hub” he added. The university can hereby monitor and assess student engagement over time, narrowing in on what is working and what isn’t to course correct.

Results

JHU’s implementation of CG has resulted in higher and better-quality student engagement. The portal has also reportedly created a better user experience for both administrators and students, further bolstering system use. This growth is reflected in the user stats as follows:

Going Forward with CG

Usership is growing and will continue to do so. According to Calvin, “We wanted an engagement platform that could grow as we grow and did not expect adoption to happen overnight. We are fine doing things one step at a time”, he added.

Homewood served as the lead and now other schools, or community hubs are replicating the process. “The trickle-down strategy has been pretty effective for us”, Calvin said. Further, it has reportedly helped create more synergies and collaboration across campuses.

Bottom Line

CG has provided JHU with the comprehensive and customizable system it needed. CG and the Multi Community Hub Campus Portal have helped the university increase overall involvement, improve the student experience, measure engagement, and save budget.

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