In an effort to promote student involvement with on-campus events, the Division of Student Life is introducing Involvio, a new event planning app, to Mills.
Currently, events at Mills are communicated using flyers, emails, word of mouth or the student forum. However, the Division of Student Life is introducing Involvio, a student engagement app that helps students access resources, connect to peers, stay organized and attend events. With this app, students can more easily keep track of what events they’d like to attend and find more events nearby. According to their website, Involvio helps students from orientation to graduation stay connected to their community.
“Programs all over get more connected. You can see all departments,” Katherine Genis, coordinator of Student Life said.
Usually, people in a specific department receive emails about events for that department, but if they want to attend an event hosted by a different department, they have to see a flyer about it or have someone invite them.
“To my knowledge, there isn’t a standard engagement app [for promoting events at colleges],” Genis said.
Involvio is better than Facebook event announcements, Genis said, because students don’t have to first find the page for the event or have Facebook accounts.
However, posting an event on Involvio is different than posting an event on Facebook.
“Staff with admin privileges are able to create groups. Unfortunately students can’t, but the admins can create the page for them,” Genis said. Having administrators create groups centralizes and organizes the information so the club board can make sure everyone has the information they need.
Clubs currently share information using group emails, but if students aren’t on the email list, they don’t see upcoming events unless there is a flyer or poster put up. Using Involvio, students can see the upcoming events of the clubs they may not be a member of but still follow.
“Users who attend events create data that tells event hosts what times work best and whether an event was popular by checking into events; however, this is not mandatory,” Genis said.
Staff are hoping to gain better ideas about what events work and when to hold them to attract the most people. Checking into events means they can get an idea of when more people come to events and what types are most popular.
Involvio is not just used for event calendars either.
“It [also] has all the locations of the all gender bathrooms on campus,” Vanessa Olgin, transfer student advocate and employee of the Division of Student Life, who has been trained in using the app, said.
The app is available for both Android and iOS systems and Mills posts events there. DSL is working with Bon Appetit to offer free drinks to students if they download the app.
