Download - Penn Foster Community Playbook

Our Student Community 01

BELIEVEAND ACHIEVECommunity Play-book

“As an online continuing education provider, Penn Foster’s community brings us closer to our students.

A stronger bond is forged by personalizing the relationship, instilling a sense of school spirit and going

beyond the limits of independent learning by enabling information sharing and collaboration.” - Mark Slayton

“

By Erin Connors, Daniel Marotta, + Anna Stulb

Our Student Community02

8.5KDaily Active

Users

180KContent Pieces

22KAnswered Questions

84KRegistered Users


What is the Community?A tool for every employee and student to use.

The Penn Foster Community is a place for students

from around the world to interact and learn from

each other — share stories, offer advice, seek help

and connect with peers to make the most out of

the Penn Foster experience. Our community fea-

tures a wide offering of support services, including:

a community map for students to find others in their

area to connect with, polls, student blogs, orga-

nized discussions and groups by area of study, a

calendar of events, documents, video and much

more. In June 2013 Penn Foster launched a gamifi-

cation system to encourage students to self service

and help answer each others questions.

The community is also a way for Penn Foster as a

company to better service it’s students from a one-

to-many perspective, represent the student expe-

rience to prospective students, receive real-time

feedback, and supporting business objectives

through student retention, motivation, engagement,

and trust.

The Penn Foster Student Community is truly an

accessible place to everyone to experience and

participate in our brand promise. Join us!


A service tool

• Student Self Service

• Employee Assisted Service

• Student to Student Service

A communication platform

• For Topic based conversations -

See Academic Groups

• For students to student

• For employee to student

A Content Management Platform

• A place to post & host educational, service

and marketing content: Example

• Education - course relevant documents

like assignment tips & tricks, practicum

info, career, and professional development

spaces

• Service - Help Docs

• Marketing - Featured News & Events

• Social Forum Student stories

• Employee Interviews

Employee Assisted

Employee to Student

News & Events


Student Council QuestionsA Marketing Tool

• User Generated Content: Students create

thousands of pieces of content relevant to

our programs. We can re-purpose this con-

tent for marketing content like testimonials.

• Student Council Questions ( See right)

• The community is a place where students

can connect with real PF students and get

their feedback on programs. This transpar-

ency is why it’s important to provide the best

possible experience for our students.

*Marketing Website

*We currently pull student reviews from the community and feature them on our marketing website.


reareRe

Just Getting Started?

Greet Students in the Introduce Yourself Space.

1

These first three actions can be

put into practice by everyone,

Whether you are a community

veteran, newbie, work in finance

or student care, you can be a

part of the conversation.

Welcome. Motivate. Participate.

WELCOME


reareRe

Give a congrats or shout out to an employee or student who has done a good job.

2

Have a personal interest or affiliation? Try a social group

like Book Club or Military Group.3

PARTICIPATE

MOTIVATEIf you are a Education SME -

start participating in your academic group.4CONTRIBUTE


Selling the Community to Students + Parents

The community is a virtual campus where students can ask questions about their

courses, connect to peers, participate in social groups and find support and motivation

throughout their lifetime as a Penn Foster student and Alumni.

It supports our asynchronous model. It is:

• Accessible 24/7, 365 days a year

• Collaborative

• Supportive

• Motivational

• Self-empowering

• Allows us to service students and parents more

effectively


• Learn to manage your settings here.

• What you can see on your profile as an

employee is different from what others can

see. There are four different viewing settings:

Yourself, Friends, Everyone, + Registered Users.

What you see:

• We allow prospects to join the community so

that they can get real student feedback on our

programs and the Penn Foster experience.

What Everyone Sees:

v

It is private & safe for users

• The site is open to prospective students but

student information is secure and can only be

shared publicly if the student changes their

privacy settings.

Privacy Settings

Privacy Options


Community StructureHow it’s setup.

Student Community

Academic Groups Social Forums

Here you will find individual

communities based on academic

programs. You can locate your

program’s community to connect

with students & instructors to

discuss program related content.

Groups are nested by Career

School, College, High School, or

by topic. Under these categories

you can find specific sub-spaces.

These program spaces are great

for adding program related

course content, reaching out to

new and current students and

assisting those looking for help

or support.

Student Map News & Events

Community Social Forums are

dedicated spaced for you to

share about your life and the

Penn Foster Experience. Ask

questions, give advice, and dis-

cuss your experience here.

Sub-spaces include:

• Introduce Yourself

• Share Your PF Experience

• Congrats and Shoutouts

• Social Groups & Student

Clubs

The Student Map is a place for

students to find eachother by

program or nearby.

The student map is only available

when you are logged into the

community since it pulls your

current location.

Penn Foster Meetups:

The only subspace of the Stu-

dent Map is the Student Meetup

Space. This page allows students

by location to begin conver-

sations and form study groups

(virtually or physically). There are

spaces built out for all fifty states,

most metropolitan cities, and for

out international students. Follow

your local space to see local

student activity.

The News and Events space is

where you can keep up to date

with all Penn Foster activity. This

includes student and employee

interviews, our feature friday stu-

dents, contests, PR opportunities,

meetup promotions, webinars,

awards, new features, etc.

There is a feed of all news but

also features content which is

shown on the community home-

page. If you’d like something

feature please contact daniel.

[email protected]

Category: Working with Animals

Program: Veterinary Technician Associate Degree

Course Specific Space

School: Penn Foster College


How it’s setup.

Blogs Jobs Help Space PF Live

The blogs space is a place

that hosts multiple blogs about

student programs, news relevant

to students, current events

and more. A few current blogs

include our:

Ambassador Blog

Language Matters

Mental Mashup

The Job Space on the commu-

nity is dedicated to supporting

student post-graduation. Here

you can check for Job Posting

alerts, hold discussions with your

peers, participate in polls that

matter to you, and get awesome

tips and advice to make “The

Hunt” an easier process.

Job Postings:

Employers can send posts to us

for free. In this space students

can browse positions by catego-

ry. There are updated by kendra.

[email protected]

Student Success Center:

Here you can access webinars,

helpful documents, and career

tips to help you graduate ca-

reer-ready and prepared for life

after graduation.

The Community Help and

Feedback space is where you

will find general information and

answers to your frequently asked

questions about the Penn Foster

Community.

Sub-spaces include:

• Get Started

• Community Help

• Community FAQ

• Student Care Help Forum

• Education Forum

• Academic FAQ’s

• Technical Solutions FAQ’s

• Admissions Forums

PF Live is our live webinar space

where student can register for

upcoming events.

There is always an up to date

calendar of events with a few

sample webinars.


Using the CommunityLearn to use to community to achieve your goals.

It’s good for you.The Penn Foster Student Community is not only a

tool for students but it is also a useful asset to our

business. It can assist you in performing your job.

The following is an outline of how you can make

the most out of the community as an employee.

1. Determine your purpose on the community. Think

about what ways either you or the student can

benefit from your participation. Will you be:

• Creating help content

• Creating course related content

• Providing Service

• Looking for real-time student feedback

• Assessing trends or FAQ’s

• Providing Support + Motivation

• Looking for inspiration / efficiencies

2. Chose spaces to follow.

• You should be participating in multiple

spaces based on your interests just as

students are. What is important to you?

What should you be paying attention to?

Follow these space, follow specific tags

and threads.

3. Learn to make connections

• Reinforce two way communication with

students by initiating and responding

• Like, comment on, and share other content

• Login in frequently to be aware or what’s

trending on the community and social


4. Become a Content Creator

• Save yourself and students time by filling

content holes. *Make sure it does not already

exist*: Example

We are currently working very hard on proving

further business value for the community but we

already know it’s heart is in service.

Without a phyical campus, the student community

is a unique opportunity for virtual students to

connect in a social way. While some technical

or shorter programs may not require this type of

support, those in more involved programs or High

School have already shown that they truly value

the experience. Penn Foster students are online,

but not alone.

The Community has allowed us to

engage with our students in new ways

- and better yet, it enabled connections

between our students.”

- Dara Warn, Chief marketing Officer

“

It’s good for students.The Penn Foster Student Community helps

student in the following ways:

• Peer to Peer Support

• Instructor to Student Support

• Video Resources

• Relationship Building

• FAQ Help Docs

105K

$5.49

175K

$7.75

Service Emails

Cost Per Interaction

2012

2012

2013

2013


Set up your profile:

Having a complete community profile is very

important in facilitating online relationships.

• A photo is necessary in creating personal and

trusting relationships. Add a few.

• Clearly state your title and role as a Penn

Foster employee.

Become a Content Creator:

You can create the following types of content from

the create button at the top right of your screen:

• New Discussions

• New Documents

• New Status Updates

• Upload Video Content

• User Polls

• A Blog Post

Understanding Tags and @ Mentions

When you use @mention, you can alert people, plac-

es, and groups that you’re talking about them and a

notification of the activity flows into the Communica-

tions stream of the person or people in the group or

place. Tags are keywords that you and others assign

to content to make it easier to find when you search

for it. You can assign tags to existing or new content

to describe it for people who might search for it later.

You can even assign tags to your status update.

Dr. Jim

How Search Works:

When searching a question, think about how an

answer would be phrased, and search for that. The

search function breaks the results into content, peo-

ple, and places. Ex: If you are looking for a question

about book shipments; search book shipments,

then refine to documents.

The Basics:


Our Community Mobile App

The Community Mobile App is the lightweight

version of the Student Community. It allows access

to your inbox, activities, and basic create functions.

Navigating the community, managing content + monitoring activity:One of the biggest issues we receive feedback on

is that the community is too hard to navigate or get

to important spaces. Indeed, it is large but if users

make use of these tools you can focus on the

spaces, content and people that are most important

to you quite easily. It is all about organizing.

Bookmarks:

Any piece of content can be bookmarked. You can

add in tags and notes for each bookmark, you can

even make your bookmarks private. Bookmarks

are very helpful for organizing FAQ docs or other

frequently referenced content.

Activity Streams:

Customize your activity streams to focus on the

content most important to you. Custom streams can

be created where you can organize the people and

places most important to you.


Answering Questions:When answering a student inuiry first search for an authoratitive answer that may already exist.

Second, link to that document in your response. If one does not exist, answer the question.

Quick Links:

Each user has the ability to set 10 Quick links. By

default we have set these Quicklinks for all users.

This is a great space to link to your most visited

spaces, saved searches or other frequently visited

content on the community. When adding new Quick

Links you only need to enter the URL content AFTER

http://www.community.pennfoster.edu/community”

• Example: If you wanted to create a quick link

to the Academic FAQs you would enter https://

community.pennfoster.edu/community/aca-

demic-help/academic-f.a.q.

Making use of Help documents

+ Student Generated Content:

There is no need to rewrite a response for an FAQ

Supportive:

Encouragement and reinforcement is provided in

this response:


Collaboration:

See a question that needs a more detailed answer?

If you’re not the SME or are not confident in your

response. Tag a colleague for assistace

Greeting + Encouragement + Making use of UGC

?


What the Community Isn’t

Although it uses similar technology and incorpo-

rates features like, news feeds, @ mentions and

private messages the community is NOT Face-

book. The community is not designed to replace

Facebook nor can it be made more like Facebook.

Why we don’t use Facebook for our community:

• Privacy - Facebook has its own privacy policy.

We cannot control what they do with our data

or student data

• We cannot require students and faculty to use

Social Media sites to get service from PF

• Security - we can’t guarantee the safety of

your personal info on Facebook

• Control - we cannot control the content that is

on Facebook - on our community we have full

control of content, permissions and all individual

users.

• Content Management - Facebook is not a con-

tent management system and is not designed

to be used as such. With the PF community we

can host and maintain as much content as we

want (help docs, videos etc..)

• Service - we can’t track open questions on

Facebook - with the comity we can and assign

employees to help students.

A social networking service

like twitter / Facebook


GET ENGAGED - BECOME A CONTRIBUTOR

COMMUNITY BOOKSTORE

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Learn how you can get involved

NDLW All Student Meet Up at Penn Foster

Vote for Penn Foster

Scranton SAGE Awards

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Read More

Dr. Jim’s Meet Up Tour

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Read Alicia’s Story

What it Meant to Meet a Student

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Read More

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2014 Grad of the Year Party

Subject: Get Engaged: The Comunity Newsletter for Penn Foster Employes

Stay Engaged.

The best way to stay up to date with current

events and the newest ways to stay engaged

with the Student Community is through our

monthly Engage Newsletter via Email.

If you have any further questions about use or

functionality please do not hesitate to contact us.

We are also always eager to hear you creative

ideas to bring additional value to internal and

external initiatives via the community. Join the

conversation, stay engaged!

ERIN CONNORS

Community: erin.connorsEmail: [email protected]: Penn Foster Erin

Twitter: @erinlconnors

DANIEL MAROTTA

Community: daniel.marottaEmail: [email protected]: Penn Foster Dan

Twitter: @pennfosterdan

ANNA STULB

Community: astulbEmail: [email protected]: Penn Foster Anna

Twitter: @pennfosteranna


game time!