As the country reopens, in-person college campus graduation events are part of the healing process:   

• Students graduating from colleges are eager to walk across the stage instead of seeing faces through a monitor.  
• Families and friends look forward to beaming with pride as they witness their loved ones earning degrees.  
• College graduation officers are preparing graduation ceremonies, as is the tradition.  

Safety, fortunately for all involved, is at the forefront of these preparations.  

That is where CampusRight comes into play. 

CampusRight is a mobile, automated, and integrated software system that offers the right mix of flexibility with dynamic forms, real-time access to student data, and a desktop-and mobile-friendly environment for the entire ticketing and event registration process. 

Advantages of Digital Ticketing    

When you are looking for a digital ticketing solution to your upcoming graduation ceremonies, you would be wise to consider a tool that offers a touchless form of ticketing.      

As part of the preparations, CampusRight’s digital ticketing options can give everyone a safer alternative to the in-person distribution of paper tickets.   

Digital ticketing options mean campuses can meet local regulations and virtually assure event safety. When paired with the Center for Disease Control (CDC), guidelines such as wearing masks and social distancing, visitor screening, and contact tracing, colleges can help restore confidence in attending events in-person. Providing digital tickets gives officers organizing graduation ceremonies a way to trace tickets back to the student who claimed them. By linking students to their campus IDs, graduation officers can maintain a complete audit trail and a roster of all expected attendees.    

Additional benefits of digital ticketing include:      

• Set a per grad ticket limit   
• Changing ticket limits by ceremony   
• Arranging interactive seating  
• Allowing real-time access to student registration and ticket information     
• Selling campus bookstore memorabilia 

Interactive Seating  

Part of staying in step with social distancing guidelines is ensuring guests sit in groups or "pods." With shifts in the rules around the number of attendees allowed at indoor and outdoor events, graduation officers may find it difficult to adjust quickly. An interactive seating map has an enormous impact on the graduation ceremony. Graduation officers can easily reserve sections of seats ahead of time. When college students who are graduating claim their graduation tickets, they can zero in on the perfect row or seats for their family and friends who plan to attend.  

Check out the benefits of CampusRight

Whiteboards or printed maps and sticky notes are hardly the best alternatives for commencement officers. While coordinating graduations on campus, they may have many administrative duties or oversee other events simultaneously.   

Some events typically don't require "assigned" seating, leaving it up to guests to find the ideal section to watch the ceremonies. This manual process often leads to seating disputes where one person is saving seats for a group. Ushers or school staff may intervene to resolve conflicts on what is supposed to be a happy occasion.   

Even when graduation officers do not have time to manage guest seating, they must meet the Americans with Disabilities Act provisions. Reserving sections for guests with mobility issues, allowing service dogs, or assuring those with hearing and sight impairments will play a part in successful graduation ceremonies. Setting aside seating for special guests on the dais presents challenges, too, given how often guests can change from ceremony to ceremony.  

That is where CampusRight can solve myriad issues for graduation officers. 

Digital Graduation Tickets  

Many ticketing platforms have desktop versions and mobile applications. CampusRight uses cloud-based software-as-a-service to produce digital graduation tickets. The advantage to using CampusRight is no logins or account creation is necessary for students. And graduation officers have accounts from which to monitor the ticketing from any mobile device.  

When CampusRight is available, after students preregister for their ceremonies and select their guest tickets, colleges send confirmation emails with their tickets attached. Students can generate digital tickets and present them at graduation venues for scanning. Each type of ticket contains two barcodes to ensure perfect scanning.   

Long-Term Thinking  

Digital ticketing with CampusRight can help your campus during and after the current pandemic as a protocol. Think about the possibility of future emergencies that may require significant changes to how you plan the ticketing for graduation ceremonies.  

To see these features in action, schedule a demonstration of CampusRight.

Campuses were quick to act and moved students online as soon as the threat of COVID-19 was clear, which was a smart move for our communities' health and safety. As colleges and universities grapple with the challenges posed by the re-opening of in-person classes and resuming events, it is essential to consider that an online-equivalency is likely to be the norm even after the pandemic. Adopting technology that translates in-person events into online events now will help colleges and universities now and for the foreseeable future.   

Schools have been offering online admissions applications and registration to college for some time now. Why isn't the same experience being provided for campus events throughout the year, including graduation? While traditional in-person events with paper tickets can be nostalgic, they are also less convenient (and more expensive) than you might think.   

Disadvantages of Paper Tickets   

Traditional paper tickets are familiar. There is a social factor involved, such as celebratory events often associated with passing out the graduation tickets or tailgating at a sporting event and distributing tickets. Other potential issues for attendees and their families include:   

• Social distancing in a line to purchase tickets   
• Accessibility for immunocompromised students and students with immunocompromised family members   

In addition to concerns about the pandemic, budget is a genuine concern for many colleges and universities. Paper ticketing is thought to be cheaper than online ticketing platforms. However, there are many hidden costs in paper ticketing that are often overlooked, such as:   

• Staff hours and productivity lost for sorting and handing out tickets   
• Material costs are not transparent when printing tickets yourself   

Intuitions and organizations that decided it was time to move on from conventional ticketing have done so because the demand for tickets starts to outpace even their patience and time limitations. However, many challenges present themselves at the actual venue where the ceremony takes place, including:   

• Lost tickets   
• Reproduced or counterfeit tickets   
• Line-ups or inconvenient hours to pick up tickets  

Advantages of Digital Tickets and Online Ticketing  

Mobile ticketing makes admission and ticket management a simple, straightforward process for you and the event attendees. Students can use social media to host virtual events and share links to purchase event tickets or graduation tickets online.  

It is worth noting that before the pandemic, students were changing their habits and adopting new technologies, continuing to push the envelope by using new technologies as "shortcuts" for everyday behaviors. Providing digital tickets and online events can help students feel a part of a community in this time of isolation.   

Buying tickets online is convenient and allows for the appropriate social-distancing protocol to be observed. Providing digital tickets for both free and paid events provides you with a complete audit trail and a roster of all expected attendees. When looking for a digital ticketing solution, it is highly recommended that you consider a tool that allows for ticket limitations for extra protection to limit the number of tickets sold.   

Additional benefits of digital ticketing include:   

• Customizing tickets with colors and logos for your campus  
• Creating dynamic forms with real-time access to student information   
• Allowing the collection of donations   
• Selling event merchandise   
• Providing a fast, mobile-friendly purchase experience compatible with any device  

Digital ticketing with CampusRight can help your campus during the pandemic and after as protocol for events and ticketing are likely to be impacted for the long term. CampusRight is a mobile, automated, and integrated software system that offers the right mix of flexibility with dynamic forms, real-time access to student data, and a mobile-friendly environment for the entire ticketing and event registration process. To see these features in action, schedule a demonstration of CampusRight.   

What is data-aware design? Data-aware design is a salient topic in UX/UI (User Experience/User Interface Design) that IT departments across the world are beginning to realize is important in increasing end-user engagement. It relates to the process by which you make decisions about the layout, color scheme and content of your digital assets and how you evaluate whether or not they were effective in reaching the intended audience and effective outcomes. The University of Michigan, a OneCampus customer, originally presented their formula for data-aware design in an informative webinar.

This blog provides a brief overview of some key points. 

What is data-driven design? 

Data-driven design is the most granular form of the creative and investigative process. It focuses primarily on optimization and efficiencies looking to drive an increase in ‘specific areas.’ An example of data-aware design that was highlighted in the University of Michigan's webinar "Unlocking the Secrets of Data-Aware Design on Your Campus" is conducting research on the impact of color in button performance on a website. They ultimately opted to use a red button over a blue button because it leads to a higher conversion by more than 20%.

What is data-informed design? 

Data-informed design widens the focus compared to data-driven design and seeks to understand high-level user expectations and perceptions. An example of this could be trying to understand why users feel that the interface isn’t “user-friendly” by conducting interviews with end-users that attempts to understand what they wanted to accomplish but weren't able to.  

What is data-aware design? 

Data-aware design provides the most flexibility for the creative and investigative processes. It allows for a complete exploration of the problem landscape and integrates aspects of both data-informed and data-driven design, allowing users to define and solve the problems that are the biggest priorities regardless of which ‘bucket’ they fit into.  

There is no more or less validity to any of the above methodologies for looking at your design. When we consider data-aware design it’s important to remember that data and design go hand-in-hand, to inform each other. Data exposes problems that design can solve, and design should inform the data inquiry process to create a fulsome feedback loop that works towards improving usability for the end-user.

“Ask ‘why’ at least five times.”

Data-aware inquiry relies on keeping an open mind and considering your own bias. A method of inquiry that designers use to solve for their own bias is to "ask 'why' at least five times." While this may sound overly simplistic, it will allow you and your team to delve deeper into the problem by helping you and your team reach clarity of the intent or purpose behind your design.

Use the why method to dig deeper into why you want to know something that or what you are hoping to learn or solve for. This will help you to clearly define your research questions before selecting the testing methods and metrics that will determine the success or failure of your test.

Data can validate design and demonstrate the value of your work if you are thoughtful in your process. For more information and examples of data-aware design, we recommend watching the complete webinar recording of "Unlocking the Secrets of Data-Aware Design on Your Campus" co-hosted with the University of Michigan and rSmart.

rSmart is the maker of OneCampus.

OneCampus is the revolutionary way to provide students, faculty, and staff access to campus services faster and easier than ever. Find student services, grades, tutoring services, game tickets, and much more with a Google-like search tool. Help your students find success with OneCampus.

Educause brings the best to the table, from top-notch presentations to braindates where you can spark meaningful conversation with other professionals like yourself, and software providers. CampusRight is part of the TransACT product suite, and our related offerings consisting of OneCampus, CampusClassifieds, or CampusConfirm will be holding down the fort at Booth 1652, stop in to see a demonstration on the interactive monitors.

To help make your trip go more smoothly, we’ve poured over the agenda so that you don’t have to - Here are some sessions we’d recommend checking out if you’re going to be attending the Educause conference this year. If you’re more of a DIY-er, we recommend narrowing your search by looking at specific programs and tracks being highlighted this year, like: Creating a Culture of Data-Informed Decision Making, Managing and Reducing Information Technology Risk, or Transforming the Student Experience. 

Tuesday: 

• Strategies to Drive Faculty Adoption of Student-Centered Technologies 10/15 10:45 am  
• Ch-Ch-Changes: Navigating Change with Faculty at Scale 10/15 10:45 am 

• The EDUCAUSE 2020 Top 10 IT Issues 10/15 11:45 am  
• Mobile Blueprint for Improving Student Engagement and Success 10/15 11:45 am  

• Reducing Risk and Redundancy, Vetting Software and Services Procurement 10/15 1:15 pm 
• Visualizing Possibility: Transforming How We Create and Share Knowledge Online 10/15 1:15 pm 

• Give The People What They Want: Managing an Evolving Portfolio of Integrated Applications 10/15 2:15 pm 
• Communications Infrastructure and Applications Community Group Session (open to all) 10/15 2:15 pm 

• Approaching IT Solutions from the Student Perspective 10/15 4:15 pm 
• Earning Public Trust: A Modern Approach to Proving Your Value 10/15 4:15 pm 

• Digital Transformation from Day One: Onboarding New Employees 10/15 5:00 pm 
• Leverage Your Service Desk to Drive University-Wide Service Improvements 10/15 5:00 pm  

Wednesday:  

• Breaking Down Data Silos with Data and Application Integration 10:45 am  
• Balancing Art and Science in IT Service Delivery 10:54 am  

• Student Personas: Making It Personal 1:15 pm  
• Communication Redefined: How Mobile Is Fixing the Campus Communication Problem 1:15 pm   

• Getting Things Done: What Will Your Leadership Legacy Be? 3:15 pm 
• Digitalization Needs a Change in the IT Mindset 3:15 pm  

• Deploying a Student-Centered Enterprise Content Services Platform 4:00 pm  
• Engaging the Digital Native: Reshaping the Student Experience for Gen Z 4:00 pm  

• Making Connections: How to Reduce the Burden of Information Sharing 5:00 pm 
• Delivering a Unicorn: 2 Paths to Real Organizational Change 5:00 pm  

Thursday:  

• Changing the Lead: The Art and Impact of Moving On 8:30 am  
• Human-Centered Approaches to Change Management Across Higher Ed 9:30 am  

• Closing the Gender Gap in Technology 10:45 am  

With so many options, it can be overwhelming having to choose. If you’re still not sure where to start, stop by Meet and Mingle for answers to your Educause conference questions on opening day (Tuesday October 15th). 

Streamlines Internal Processes

With intuitive self-service options and 24/7, mobile-friendly access, school automation software empowers both students and faculty members to perform administrative tasks with ease. This ultimately frees college administrators up to focus on other daily responsibilities and improves the student experience in the process. School automation software also integrates with student information and general ledger systems, eliminating manual work and effectively automating existing processes.

Automates Forms and Payments

A school automation solution like CampusRight automates form management and payment collection. This provides students with an easy, mobile-friendly way to fill out forms and make payments, eliminating the need for college administrators to chase down paper forms and cash payments from students across campus. Integration with general ledger (GL) systems allows for digital fee collection, decreasing the risk of cash misappropriation and reducing manual work.

Improves Cross-Campus Collaboration

School automation software improves cross-campus collaboration by offering helpful features such as automated notifications and workflow approvals. These features allow administrators to communicate more effectively across departments on campus—not to mention that the ability to coordinate student information saves time and helps avoid delays resulting from manual approval processes.

Eases the Burden of Reporting

School automation software saves a significant amount of time that would otherwise be spent entering, tracking, and collating student data. Automated data collection helps to reduce errors that occur as a result of manual data entry and offers administrators a holistic, big-picture perspective for reporting capabilities.

Simplifies Event Planning

From invitations to ticket sales, school automation software simplifies the entire event planning process by automating all event-related tasks within one centralized platform. This type of solution frees up time that would otherwise be spent on manual event management tasks, such as verifying graduation statuses across departments and distributing graduation tickets to students allowing college administrators to work more efficiently and deliver a better experience for students.

The right school automation software can boost productivity and improve internal processes, from workflow approvals, to form management, and executing the perfect campus event. However, creating well-designed web forms is easier said than done. Download our free guide, Top Five Tips for Creating Effective Web Forms, to learn how to build forms that are easy for administrators to create and for users to fill out.

College administrators manage some of the most complex work environments in our society today. Beyond being on the front lines of academia, research and innovation, administrators must tend to everyday tasks from helping with dropped classes to updating student forms. With so much to stay on top of, administrators can feel challenged to be as efficient as they would like to be each day.

In an effort to improve efficiency, college administrators are turning to workflow automation software to streamline internal processes and improve the quality of their work. Digital solutions automate tasks and help do away with manual work, such as compiling and collating student data and manually entering it into different internal systems. In this article, we cover some of the key ways to empower college administrators to be more efficient.

Digitize School Forms

Paper forms are not only inefficient and hard to keep track of, but they are also bad for the environment. Digitizing forms allows administrators to switch to a paperless system and improve their operational efficiency by eliminating manual processes such as collecting paper forms and entering data into a system.

Creating, tracking, and updating digital forms is simpler for college administrators than traditional paper forms. Using digital forms is also more convenient for the student population as it enables them to complete forms where they're most active, on their mobile devices. Student data is stored digitally and no longer requires manual entry or updating—not to mention that information is easily accessible to all of the departments across campus. SIS integrated solutions prevent information from being lost due to misplaced paper forms.

Automate Workflows

Outdated manual processes do nothing but slow administrators down—which is why automation is a game-changer for increasing efficiency. Automating the workflows associated with forms, payments and approvals allows administrators to streamline processes and work more efficiently. Automated notifications and workflow approvals eliminate the need to repeatedly reach out to managers and other departments for approvals and help administrators avoid any delays caused by slow approvers. Automation also helps improve communication and collaboration across departments.

Integrate Systems

Integrated systems create data silos and inhibit productivity by forcing manual processes. A workflow automation solution such as CampusRight integrates seamlessly with your student information system (SIS) and general ledger (GL) system to remove silos and reduce the need for manual data entry. Seamless integration also eliminates the need for administrators to manually pull or cross-check data in disparate systems and improves collaboration across departments on campus.

College administrators can improve their productivity and increase their efficiency in the workplace—but they need the right solution in place to help make change happen. Digital solutions such as CampusRight empower college administrators to make these improvements by helping to eliminate manual work, automate processes, and streamline workflows.

Does the manual data entry associated with paper form management keep you from completing the work you're most passionate about? Download our free guide, Top Five Tips for Creating Effective Web Forms, to learn how to build forms that are easy for administrators to create, deploy, manage, and track—and for students to complete.

What is Approval Workflow? Approval Workflow is a new feature that allows Organizers to set up an approval process, requesting specific users to review the submission, and either approve or deny the application. Use CampusRight to facilitate and store the entire process, so that you avoid the risk of lost paperwork, or missed checkpoints, along the way

Approval Workflows can help you automate your processes, making them both more consistent and more efficient. The Approval Workflow lets you route documents to one or more people for their approval.

The demand for Automation

There’s been a need especially in the university space for automating approval forms. Approval forms can be any form of request that needs to be signed (or approved) by certain entities within an organization. As an example, a student requests for permission to enroll on a specific university course. Such activity requires approval from several governing bodies due to certain policies that institutions have put in place. The student then has to physically forward the approval form to these governing bodies which makes it time-consuming. With the new Approval Workflows, the process becomes much simpler!

No more hustling around campus, with your form in your hand, trying to get your approvers to sign your form. All you need to do is setup an Approval Workflow, and the system will do the rest for you!

Using CampusRight, you can customize your forms. You have a lot of flexibility when building forms with us, but it’s important to spend some time in developing the forms. But what kind of content should you create? What are the must-haves for forms to get results? 

Standing in a room full of university registrars, Ken challenged them to prove him wrong when it comes to the general acceptance of forms. 

No one corrected him when Ken said that if you asked 100 people if they like filling out forms, a vehicle to collect student information, they would likely receive 100 No’s.

OK, to be fair, maybe 98 would say ‘no’ because there’s probably some people like Ken who have an unhealthy obsession with forms.

Ken was at the recent Upper Midwest Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (UMACRAO) and the week prior at the Pacific ACRAO where he addressed the topic of form design and how poor design impacts admin time and student interactions. He was fortunate enough to present form design tips and hints to people who are alert to ‘why’ form design matters.

No one likes filling out forms because they represent a barrier between us and the goal we are trying to achieve. Forms are an obstacle and human nature is to get through them as quickly as possible.

In the world of Higher Education this couldn’t be more true. 

If you want to attend college, you fill out a form. Want to challenge your grade, change your name, update personal information, graduate or become an alumnus? Fill out a form!

A captive audience

Sure, students have no choice but to fill out these forms in order for their request to become fulfilled, but if the form is confusing exceptionally complex, they will seek help. They will appear at the registrar’s office counter. They will call or email and that means valuable staff time being tied up helping them when staff could be focused on more important tasks. All because the form was not  designed with the user in mind.

CampusRight helps the student data collection process be more bearable for students and staff. Our mission is to help registrars and admissions professionals, frustrated by manual processes, move to a world of easy automation. If you think a custom demonstration would help understand how CampusRight, a mobile platform for students and staff with forms and approvals, could help you, email sales@rightlabs.com