How Maria University Brought Community Together with a MobileUp App

In addition to 34 majors and 20 minors, Ave Maria University, located near Naples, FL, offers its students a picturesque campus and a 74-degree average temperature for year-round outdoor activities. The warm climate leads to plenty of foot traffic on campus, and the university’s student life department takes advantage of it to promote various events and clubs through flyers and digital screens on campus. For those that miss the signs, the school’s daily bulletin distributed via email also helps spread the word about the latest news and events. Though all these communications are important, none has been more effective than “The Pound,” Ave Maria’s recently released app for student engagement from MobileUp Software. “It’s definitely a generation that is tied to its electronics,” said Rachel Flowers, Assistant Director of Student Life at Ave Maria University. “You feel like you have a good chance of reaching students by sending information to their phones. They have them with them all the time.” Research firms such as Gallup agree. Its studies show 51% of smartphone owners who are between 18- and 29-years-old check their device a few times an hour or more and 22% say they check it every few minutes. A Deloitte Global survey found 88% of the same aged smartphone users check their phone within 30 minutes of waking upin the morning. Working with the MobileUp administrator tools and client services team, the Ave Maria app administrators have configured the app (iOS and Android) with various activity calendars and helpful information for students. “We try to make it a convenient tool to find essential things such as dining information, career services, and tutoring help,” Flowers said. “We also know we need to add in activities to make it fun to get them to use it.”

Photo: Ave Maria University

Activities, Geofences, and Beacons

As for some of those activities, the Ave Maria app uses MobileUp’s connectivity with geofences and beacons. This enables a student to use the location services settings in the app to automatically check-in at events and be eligible for rewards. For instance, students were granted an excused absence when they crossed the geofence and registered their attendance at the recent March for Life in Washington, D.C. At another geo-based activity, the first 30 students who checked in with their apps and location services at a recent basketball game won free pizza. In addition to geo-based contests, the app also includes a Valentine’s Day-themed contest based on app participation. In the challenge, the app asked students to “shout out” to a person they love through a provided form. Those that complete the activity are entered into a drawing for four tickets to a dinner cruise on the nearby Naples Princess. “Word of mouth has been the best thing to help the use of the app spread,” Flowers said. “We really want them to use it so we are also very heavy on the incentives.” In addition to arenas and city intersections, the app also makes use of location services in smaller spaces. For example, it used a hardware beacon with the app at an activities fair at the beginning of the semester to help track attendance and overall interest in the event. All the activities play into the app’s gamification abilities. Students earn points for attending the various events and completing activities. A real-time leaderboard and photo gallery helps encourage participation and competition.