Anti-Melt Best Practices

1. Transition students to their school emails: Be proactive in reminding students to edit their accounts to their school emails. As early and often as you can let students know how to edit their email in their Wisr accounts, the better. Get them in front of articles like these How to change or update your email or How to connect your Wisr email to your school's SSO.
   
   1. For admissions customers: Do this in their deposited student welcome email, or make it a checklist step once they deposit. (Example: Don't forget to update your email to your new .edu email address in Wisr by following this brief step by step!)
2. Monitor and support students at risk for melting: Use your Admin dashboard and reports from your Wisr site to find students who are not logging in or connecting with students on your site. After identifying those students, have ambassadors reach out to them 1 on 1 to offer support and answer any questions the student may have. Find ways to cultivate that relationship and bring the student back into your Wisr site and school community.
3. Give students a place to connect: Once students leave high school and begin to think about college, they want to learn who their friends will be once on campus. Give students a space to connect without Administrator-created discussions. This can be a space to look for a roommate, to connect with each other, or just to see who is going to be in their class on campus. This space allows them to see firsthand who will be with them for their college years.
4. Update your site data: Send over data of all students who need to have their member type changed to "Enrolled" and remove those students who have declined their offer of admission. Follow these steps to do that on your own or to find where to send this data to the Wisr team. Over the course of the summer, you should plan an official "wind down date" where you'll deactivate remaining site members and can communicate that through an event on your site.
5. Pare down your site: As attention spans and interest become more limited over the summer, you will want to make sure your activities are very focused and deliberate. Slow the influx of new events, consider grouping some of your updates together, and make sure all communities on the site are relevant to students as they transition to campus. Archiving some communities gives you as an admin less to moderate, and gives the students more streamlined access to campus resources and other admitted students. Make sure to let students know that you are removing communities though!
6. Update your Welcome Community to include next steps: Most likely your highest joined community is your Welcome Community. Since you already have a large number of students who are members, use it provide an update with concrete next steps for students. This can house a resource for their deposited student checklist or how to sign up for orientation. Use this community to allow students to feel up to date on what they need to have prepared to step foot on campus in the fall.
7. Keep ambassadors engaged: Keep your student ambassadors in particular on the site so they have the ability to answer all the questions about campus life and what they may need to bring to campus or expect in their first (or transfer) year with you. Let ambassadors start posts on “Campus FAQs” and “Top 10 Things I Need on Campus”, to start conversations and show new admits that they have someone to reach out to for their questions.
8. Share student stories (and promote your current students!): Feature a student ambassador or current student in your welcome community and remind site members that this is someone that they can connect with both now and when they're on campus. You can also prompt ambassadors to tell their stories about affinity groups, colleges, or friends on campus to create an opportunity for incoming students to see themselves at your school.
9. Create Residence Hall communities: Create communities for each of the first-year residence halls on the site so students can join (or you can invite them in if you know where they will be living) and meet other new students that will be living with them on campus. Create a commuter community for those students who are commuting so they can get to know their fellow off-campus buddies. Let student ambassadors who lived in those residence halls the first year or are RAs now moderate those communities.
10. Give students a bit of grace: Finally, between warmer weather, graduations, and parties, and friends becoming vaccinated, students will be at their computers and phones a bit less this summer. Remember this and use it as a reminder to not post as often and to plan events far enough ahead for students to be able to see it and respond a little slower than they may usually respond. If possible, maybe even find ways to incorporate these pieces into activities and posts: ask about summer plans, or your first pic back with your #postvaccinatedbffs, or coming to campus for what may be the first time. Find ways to celebrate the way life is changing for them (and hopefully you) once again!

For any questions on these best practices or how to transition them to your Wisr site, reach out to your Success Manager to find a time to talk strategy for the summer.