BELIEVE AND ACHIEVE Community 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
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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
Our Student Community 03
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!
Our Student Community04
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
Our Student Community 05
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.
Our Student Community06
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
Our Student Community 07
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
Our Student Community08
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.
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
Our Student Community 013
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
Our Student Community014
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 Student Community 015
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.
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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:
Our Student Community 017
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
?
Our Student Community018
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
Our Student Community 019
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.