Tag Archives: alumni_engagement

Alumni Engagement: Supporting Graduate Employability at Cardiff Met University

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Photo of graduates wearing mortar boards and gownsHere is the final post in my series of short project overviews from the JISC funded Relationship Management Programme. Last, but definitely not least, the project team at Cardiff Metropolitan University have developed an online learning environment (GradSpace), as part of the DePCEA (Developing a Professional Community Engagement Environment for Alumni) project, for supporting the development of graduate employability skills, assisting alumni in their transition to work and encouraging lifelong learning and professional development.

Challenges

GradSpace was developed to try and meet the following challenges:

  • it’s becoming harder for graduates to find employment after leaving university
  • the transition into work is not always easy
  • students expect their time at university to prepare them for employment.

Benefits

GradSpace has a number of functions: learning objects to help support the transition into work and professional development, an ePortfolio, and communication tools for promoting alumni services and events. Alumni are also offered taster sessions on postgraduate courses. Benefits have so far included:

  • a greater sense of confidence when applying for employment noted by alumni
  • improved application skills, such as the quality of CVs and application forms
  • improved loyalty as graduates feel that the University still wants to help them once they’ve left.

Recommendations

Engaging alumni by offering them a dedicated set of resources may encourage them to re-engage at a later date. However, it may be worth considering:

  • if more than one system is used, ensure that integration is smooth; for example alumni had to log on separately to both Moodle (GradSpace) and Mahara (ePortfolio), which meant that they did not perceive the ePortfolio to be part of the Gradspace offering
  • implementing employability resources early in the student lifecycle to ensure that lifelong learning skills and reflective practice are embedded
  • ensuring that any learning resources and materials are selected carefully; for example the project team found that practical resources were most valued.

Further Information

If you would like to find out more about this project, the following resources may help:

Alumni Engagement: Using Integrated Web Technologies at the University of Surrey

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Photo of graduates wearing mortar boards and gownsThe JISC funded Increasing Engagement and Value Using Integrated Web-Networking Technologies project at the University of Surrey has been putting together an online platform for delivering events to alumni.

Challenges

The project has used a combination of web, social media and integrated web-based technologies to help implement a cost-effective programme of events that would try and meet the following challenges:

  • the creation of mutually beneficial relationships between alumni and the University
  • improvement of the limited online opportunities for alumni with the institution
  • re-engaging with 25,000 alumni “missing” from the alumni database.

Benefits

The project developed a bespoke registration and booking platform for alumni events, set up an online version of the biannual alumni magazine, established social media channels (Facebook, Linked-In and Twitter) for communicating with alumni, and created a library of online events available for download. Benefits include:

  • supporting the recruitment of prospective students, if they are aware that there is an established professional international network of alumni
  • reduction of print costs associated with the hard copy alumni magazine, which can then be used for other aspects of alumni engagement
  • doubling of the number of Linked-In alumni group members since January 2011 by consolidating a number of disparate alumni groups into one official Surry Alumni Group with separate sub-groups.

Recommendations

When taking a technological approach to alumni engagement, the following should be considered:

  • do a full audit on any technologies that will be implemented to ensure that they don’t undermine the institution’s reputation; for example, Tinychat was used to deliver the first event, but it it soon became clear that it did not have a professional look-and-feel, nor was it compatible with a number of browsers or mobile devices
  • consider the timing and delivering of live events, particularly if a large number of international alumni (around a third of Surrey’s alumni are from outside the UK) to ensure that everyone is included
  • consider the sustainability of any web platform, e.g. is a five year shelf-life long enough?

Further Information

If you would like to find out more about this project, the following resources may help:

Alumni Engagement: Using PDP at University of Kent

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Photo of graduates wearing mortar boards and gownsPDP (Personal Development Planning) is generally done whilst a student is still studying. The EAT-PDP (Engaging Alumni Through Personal Development Planning) project at the University Kent looked at the benefits of extending access to their PDP software (Mahara) to alumni.

Challenges

The aim of the project was to extend access to Myfolio (based on the Mahara software) to alumni for at least a year. It also developed a Student Catalogue which will help prospective employers search the University’s alumni (with their permission). Some of the challenges include:

  • the difficulty in ascertaining the impact on data storage and server usage; for example although not all students are active on MyFolio, and only 25% of users are in their final year, uptake may increase as users start to see the benefits
  • data protection issues
  • providing access to a University branded platform once a student has graduated could damage the institution’s reputation, i.e. it is harder to sanction alumni than current students.

Benefits

The University wanted to offer practical assistance to the ongoing development of its graduates, particularly those who wanted to continue to record and reflect on their acheivements. Providing access to a PDP service after a student has graduated can:

  • help the institution’s reputation by improving the employability of graduates
  • provide alumni with a competitive edge in a difficult employment market
  • extend the relationship between the institution and the alumni to mutual benefit, e.g. by helping a graduate find employment, who could then mentor current students.

Recommendations

Prior to the EAT-PDP project, alumni were offered little formal guidance. However, when allowing alumni to use an instititutional platform:

  • give the user full control and ownership, e.g. by providing the ability to privately record self-reflection or publicly publishing profiles for potential employers to view
  • put procedures in place around the data archiving and deletion, especially if it’s no longer possible to contact the creator of the data
  • ensure that terms and conditions of service take alumni into account, especially if access to data is only available for a short time after graduation.

Further Information

If you would like to find out more about this project, the following resources may help:

Alumni Engagement: Forming an Alumni Community at the University of Hertfordshire

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Photo of graduates wearing mortar boards and gownsThe Alumni Link project at the University of Hertfordshire has been connecting alumni and students using online and offline activities. This can help generate employment opportunities, skills development, relationship building and mentoring.

Challenges

Alumni engagement has been viewed traditionally as an additional service once a student has graduated. In order to progress to a service that was more integrated with the student lifecycle, the following challenges needed to be addressed by the project:

  • building collaborative relationships with a range of different stakeholders, such as alumni, career development and business engagement services
  • growing an online community using LinkedIn, which generally has low uptake amongst students and recent graduates (also see the post on Brunel University’s Alumni Engagement project)
  • creating a framework for continuing to support and grow an alumni community that is sustainable.

Benefits

Alumni services are now taking on a more strategic role in the University and the subject-specific communities are starting to grow and take shape. For example:

  • there have been changes in policy, such as opening the University’s alumni group to final year students
  • engagement in the University’s LinkedIn groups has increased between 84% and 193%, depending on the group
  • Business School alumni have formed a committee for collaborating with staff and running alumni activities.

Recommendations

Being an active member of an alumni community can benefit students (such as mentoring, etc), alumni (e.g. building professional relationships, etc) and the institution (in terms of reputational benefits). Therefore:

  • a strategy should be developed for engaging alumni via online and offline activities that is co-ordinated; if departments set up independent alumni groups, this fragments the institution’s offering and reputation, should they be abandoned or lack support
  • it is important to consider that different types of alumni have different needs, for example recent graduates are more interested in finding employment, whilst retired alumni are more interested in events being run by the University
  • the institution needs to actively be involved in building alumni communities (e.g. by employing an Alumni Engagement Officer).

Further Information

If you would like to find out more about this project, the following resources may help:

Alumni Engagement: Alumni Volunteering at University of Glasgow

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Photo of graduates wearing mortar boards and gownsThe University of Glasgow’s SAVE (Sustainable Alumni Volunteer Engagement) Project has focussed on putting into place an alumni volunteering management infrastructure using existing systems that is both sustainable and engaging.

Challenges

The initial perception in the institution was that alumni volunteering opportunities weren’t adequately defined or managed. For example,

  • there was no consistent link between students and alumni
  • the process of volunteer engagement needed to be clearer and easier to follow
  • expressions of interest in volunteering weren’t recorded in a way that could be queried or reported.

Benefits

The SAVE project has helped improve the institution’s level of service by:

  • extending the range of alumni volunteering activities; for example by encouraging alumni to create online Alumni Profiles describing their time at the University, as well as asking them to act as eMentors to current students via LinkedIn
  • building clearer, formalised procedures for managing volunteering and establishing a coherent management structure to ensure sustainability
  • improving co-operation and co-ordination between University services; for example as a result of student feedback, the Careers Service now markets itself more efficiently to students.

Recommendations

The profile of alumni volunteering has been raised as a result of the SAVE project and many lessons have been learnt, such as:

  • the service design approach should be adopted from the beginning to ensure that any service improvements are user-centred
  • an alumni community should be grown gradually by identifying small target groups to ensure sustainability and build meaningful relationships
  • it’s important to manage expectations regarding alumni volunteering, i.e. not all alumni will be suitable for every opportunity; however all enthusiastic alumni should be encouraged.

Further Information

If you would like to find out more about this project, the following resources may help:

Engaging Alumni: AstonConnect+ at Aston University

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Photo of graduates wearing mortar boards and gownsThe JISC funded Relationship Management Programme is coming to an end and so I thought that I’d try and do a quick summary of each of the project Case Studies as they come in. I hope that this will provide you with a taster of the work that’s been done by the projects, which we’ll then summarise into a Compendium of Good Practice.

The first Case Study to land on my desk is Aston’s University’s “AstonConnect+ Supporting Mutually Beneficial Alumni Engagement“.

Project Outcomes

The project transformed the current engagement process between students and alumni by:

  • Enhancing the University’s Alumni Community website
  • Developing an international knowledge exchange hub by facilitating three special interest groups in Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Leadership using LinkedIn
  • Engaging a new group of stakeholders (certificate and diploma students are now included on the Rasier’s Edge database)
  • Establishing an alumni:final year mentoring programme
  • Creating an online searchable archive of the University’s public lectures
  • Creating a showcase of alumni talking about their chosen career with top tips to help final year students transition into work
  • Creating a showcase of successful and up-and-coming alumni
  • Integrating existing systems.

Challenges

There were some unexpected issues (almost all of which were resolved), such as:

  • Maintaining password protection of some content, because of licensing agreements
  • More mentors than mentees for the alumni:final year student programme
  • Low take-up rates for the alumni:alumni programme (so it won’t be pursued at this time)
  • Public lectures had to be edited or reformatted to make them suitable for YouTube
  • Not all alumni who were interested in talking about their career were able to get to campus for filming or were reticent about being filmed
  • Lack of in-house resource for the website redevelopment.

Benefits

Although it is perhaps too soon to record any metrics, the following benefits have been identified:

  • More efficient processes as a result of integrating existing systems
  • Improved ease of use when adding content to the website leading tosavings in time and resources
  • Alumni:final year student mentoring programme now embedded as part of the University’s mainstream activity
  • Creation of a bank of knowledge (alumni talking about their chosen career) to support the student transition into work
  • Bringing together staff from across the University
  • Improving business and community engagement
  • Improving student skills and employability.

Further Information

If you would like to find out more about this project, the following resources may help: