When new students kept hounding orientation director Justin Barton for the next SCVNGR keycode, he knew we did something right.
Webster University this year partnered with SCVNGR to host a 3-day event to increase participation and enhance the orientation experience. It became more successful than our wildest dreams.
More than 50 percent of the new student population participated in the text-based game, with most students completing more than 90 percent of the challenges we put out there.
Here’s what we learned in the process:
1. SCVNGR is not Foursquare.
SCVNGR and Foursquare are both location-based services, but it’s unfair to say they’re the same. Think of it this way: Foursquare is like walking into a record store, bouncing around from aisle to aisle and checking out records as you go. It’s easy and fun but without great direction. SCVNGR is picking up one album and listening to it with purpose. It’s a much richer experience.
2. Good treks take time to build.
The SCVNGR interface couldn’t be easier and treks are a breeze to build. The struggle comes in creating a good trek. A good trek takes planning and plenty of time to develop. New Student Orientation leader Emily Bahr spent hours on trek design and developing 42 challenges that were both appropriate and fun – all before she logged into the system to build them into the system.
3. The game is only as good as the people promoting it.
Build the best trek in the world and it does you no good if no one knows about it. Promotion of the game is paramount — on Facebook, in e-mail, on fliers and in person. One of the best things we did was create a training trek for New Student Orientation leaders. Their experience allowed them to become SCVNGR ambassadors and speak about the game with authority.
4. The audience will determine the delivery.
SCVNGR offers both a mobile app and text-based game. And since less than one third of teenage cell phone owners go online with their devices — according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project — this means you can forget about the app version. The text-based version isn’t as cool, but still provides great structure to allow for the greatest number of participants.
5. SCVNGR works best when it’s not working alone.
The game, by itself, is not an orientation engagement savior. It does provide a great platform to gamify the experience but it works best when it works in tandem with other platforms. Tout the game on Facebook, tweet out the leader board and blog rules and results. The more social the game becomes, the richer the experience.
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Question: Curious if you could email me about the process/time it took y’all to actually put this together. ASAP if possible! We’re grant-writing and need a time guesstimate for a project like this