Presentation to JISC

A PowerPoint version of the presentation given to JISC by Debbie Cooke on 16 December is available to download.

Final project post

The issues

In a difficult market, we had to find every possible area for improvement. Student retention, particularly during year 1, was seen as an increasing threat:

• The lost turnover represented by an early dropout is considerable - fees are usually waived and we lose the on-campus income also
• Online case studies from various universities suggest dropouts often contribute negatively to word-of-mouth .  So, they impact on future recruitment
• Ultimately, as a university charging an average of £7,500 in fees, Staffordshire has to improve its retention rate as part of its agreement with the Office of Fair Access

We wanted to find a way of improving students’ experience of their arrival at University & first few ‘exploratory weeks’.  That’s because we believe failure to settle in is one of the biggest causes of dropout:

• Anecdotally, Union reps tell us this
• Internet sources concur, e.g. ‘Homesickness’ is the second most common drop out reason related in case studies on The Student Room.  The first being ‘course issues’.

We can’t control course quality directly, as marketers – but we can ensure as much familiarity with the University as possible.

What we did

Failing to make students feel part of the University before, and immediately after arrival is thus a major contributor to dropouts.

• Enrolment notoriously busy, chaotic - individualised attention varies
• Experience showed students did not always read printed/e-mail information provided prior to arrival
• Such media incapable, anyway,  of providing a true sense of the physical environment and experiences awaiting
• We needed to bring key information to the fingertips of new students in a more engaging fashion
• To improve the feeling of belonging, improve ‘orientation’ and make students feel ‘at home’ as quickly as possible
• We chose an online game

Results

• Total potential players (2011 UK enrolment only) was 3,600
• The game was played around 2700 times.  (This will include people re-visiting their saved games). 
• The stats for the number of players who entered the enrolment hall for the first time was 1,865 (62.2%  of total audience).
• Individual usage is impossible to precisely establish but this figure is likely to reflect total participation. 
• Percentage of withdrawals v.’s 2010 equivalent was 5/6 of the previous year’s figure, a minimal change...albeit for the better!
• However with a negative prognosis at the outset on retention we feel reasonably positive.

Even with a modest improvement ROI is positive in year 1.

• 9.94 students is the ‘projected loss’ we would have suffered between September & October if 2011 withdrawal figure of 0.87% had equalled that of the previous year – 1.15%
• We can take a reasonable average for annual fees, and add to that our calculations of the share the University makes from each students’ annual cost of living (as assessed by our Students’ Union)
• Even without any government penalties that may/may not be incurred by loss of a student, the turnover involved is £149,100
• Game cost £28,000

Linking out to the web presence: choosing identifiers

One of the thing we've learnt from linking out to the university website is that URIs need to be short and consistent. At some points in the game, the user is asked to visit an external web page with the relevant URI being displayed not only as a link, but also in a "shortened" form in case they wish to remember the address for future visits. At some points, it was necessary to set up an additional shortened URI if one for the page did not already exist.

Based on this experience, we have developed additional guidelines for "short" URIs that we will be adopting across the whole of the University's web presence. The existing guidelines for short URIs were limited to:

1. Should avoid ambiguity, e.g. sometimes there's a crossover between "Business School" and "For Business", so URIs containing "business" have to be carefully selected.
2. They must not contain a year or other date reference, because they effectively go "out of date" and in the case of recurring events, require a new one to be set up each year.

New guidelines for URIs

Future practice will include:

3. Short URIs must be all lowercase.
   This is because they are case sensitive, and most users assume lowercase as it avoid additional key presses, especially on mobile devices.
4. No underscores, dashes or other characters.
   When saying the URI out loud, characters such as "dash" have to be pronounced, and many users confuse "dash" with "slash", or even "underscore". An exception may be made if the "running together" of words on the user's part leads to unintentional pronounciation ("Therapist Finder" being a classic example!)
5. Multiple short URIs to one canonical URI will no longer be approved.
6. They must not go directly to non-HTML content.
   There must be an "intervening" web page first, in order to prevent "PDF shock".
7. They must not lead off site, i.e. to somewhere not on staffs.ac.uk.
   An exception may be made for linking to the University's official social media accounts.

List of URIs used in the game

Not all of the links from My New Uni are actually shortened URIs, but the complete list is as follows:

URL	Owner
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/accommodation	Accommodation Office
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/ask	Information Services
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/counselling	Student Office
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/courses_and_study/student_services/health/	Student Office
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/courses_and_study/student_services/student_guidance/	Student Office
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/disabledstudents	Student Office
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/disabledstudents/mental_wellbeing/	Student Office
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/helloamd	Faculty of Arts, Media and Design
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/hellobusiness	Business School
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/hellofcet	Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/hellohealth	Faculty of Health
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/hellolaw	Law School
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/hellosciences	Faculty of Sciences
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/informationcentre	Student Office
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/infozone	Information Services
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/jobzone	Careers Centre
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/newstudent/full_time_students/faq.jsp	Student Office
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/newstudent/full_time_students/faq.jsp#tvlic	Student Office
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/resnet	Information Services
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/studyskills	Information Services
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/sustainabletravel	Health, Safety and Environmental Unit
http://www.staffsunion.com/activities/	Students Union
http://www.staffsunion.com/advice/moneydoctors/	Students Union

Licensing statement

A Statement from iCreate Ltd

As the creators of the My New Uni alternate reality game, in partnership with Staffordshire University, iCreate is pleased to confirm that this software program is being released under the BSD license - one of the most commonly used and widely acceptable open source licenses.

The "simplified" BSD license has been included in the headers of all source code relating to the game, and also in the meta data associated with the Installation program for the game.  A copy of the license, in text format, has also been included in the root directory of the project.  While the license acknowledges iCreate as the authors and publishers of the code (in partnership with Staffordshire University), it enables others to use and benefit from it, with very light control or restriction.

The "simplified", 2-clause form of the Berkeley Software Distribution License is a short and simple license that permits any user (or 'licensee') of the software to use, copy and distribute the modified or unmodified source code or binary form of the program, providing that all distributed copies also carry the BSD license.  Such open source licensing of software contributes to the overall advancement in knowledge

By releasing the My New Uni program under the BSD license, iCreate is willingly contributing the investment of time, knowledge and understanding undertaken by ourselves and our client, Staffordshire University, in the development of this game, to the wider community.  We hope that other educational institutions will be able to benefit from the learning and experience that we have gained in the making of this game.

By releasing the program under an open source license, we are also providing assurances to our clients and to the wider community that we, as a commercial organisation, will not attempt to hold a monopoly over the intellectual property held within this software program. 

While we would certainly welcome all opportunities to develop the software further or to reuse it, in partnership with Staffordshire University or any other educational institution, we hereby confirm that if for any reason we are unable to undertake further development, or if we are not selected as the chosen supplier to take forward future versions of the code, our client, and the wider community, will not have lost the investment already made in this project, and will be able to use, copy, modify and distribute it without reference to iCreate Ltd.

The Licence

Copyright 2011 iCreate Ltd. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY ICREATE LTD ''AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL ICREATE LTD OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

The views and conclusions contained in the software and documentation are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing official policies, either expressed or implied, of iCreate Ltd.

Launch day: early feedback is positive

Well, it was launch day yesterday, and there was an impressive spike in the number of visitors to the page where the game is hosted!

Positive Feedback (via Facebook & Twitter)

Here's a snapshot of some feedback from Facebook and Twitter that Nia has identified:

• "My uni is pretty good! Nice one! :)"
• "i like the "my new uni" game, although the one problem i had was the mouse not disappearing in first person mode. despite that, it really helped!"
• " Not bad at all, takes the hassle out of wondering where to go and what to do, also good to know how close the accommodation is to lectures."
• "Pretty cool. I was heartbroken that I couldn't find a way to jump off the map :(
• Just a thought, but what if students could contribute to this each year. Maybe incorporate it in with some 3d modelling or texturing modules?
• It would be an interesting way to show off to new students in that case. Maybe after time it could slowly be expanded to include some some lecture rooms; perhaps even the surrounding areas like beaconside village, or BASIC routes to town."
• "definatly suggests giving mynewuni a tryout !"
• "It's really impressive and definitely useful. Well done to whoever designed it!"
• " It would be better if you could go into The Ember Lounge :) - Also, we spent ages trying to find zombies to shoot, but no joy!"
• "It's (taking its time) downloading... but I get the feeling this will be amazing!"
• "Ahaha, I love the VC's "character" on the My New Uni game - very nice! /cc @StaffsUni"
• "is loving 'My New Uni' the new alternate reality game that puts you in a virtual Staffs world - fab for freshers "
• "Having a bit of a laugh with the new @StaffsUni game :)"

Results of e-mail campaign

Here are some figures regarding the HTML e-mail that was sent out to new students:

Total sent	2005	100%
Total hard bounces	14	1%
Total delivered	1991	99%
Total opened	404	20%
Total unique openings	403	20%
Total click throughs	220	54%
Total unique click throughs	176	44%
Total unsubscribes	1	0%
Total forwards	0	0%

Where should the game be hosted? - part 2

Information Services have advised that the installer can be hosted "in-house", but on a separate server to the website (www.staffs.ac.uk). Once the final version of the game is ready, they will upload it to the server and we will commence testing.

On a related note, we will also make a number of copies available on disc upon request, and a request form is being built for inclusion in the My New Uni web pages. This is to allow students who may not have internet access when they arrive to install the game.

Where should the game be hosted?

One of the remaining issues is where to host the game. The installer is around 250MB in size, and with around 2,000 new students potentially downloading it, that is a potential half a terabyte of traffic!

That's not to mention other use cases, such as:

• A user having an interrupted download, so they may need to start downloading again
• Users from other institutions
• Users installing across multiple devices

The potential increase in traffic has been raised with our Information Services department, and they will advise as to whether the current infrastructure should be able to cope, or whether the game will need to be externally hosted.