MGA’s FYE initiative encompasses three elements – academic success,, character development, and community engagement.
The Knights Academy (KA) is an online academic community focused on increasing first year student academic success by engaging the student in a variety of learning activities. These activities seek to assist students develop critical student success skills by participating in quests and engaging with other students through discussion posts. Topics covered in the Knights Academy include the following:
- Motivation
- Resilience
- Habits
- Study Skills
- Mindset
- Economic Literacy
- Media Literacy
The Knights Journey is an interactive fiction role play game intended to assist students in character development and 21st-century competencies. Students embark on quests as a modern-day Knight, solving a variety of societal, economic, technical, and environmental problems.
The Knights Community Crew (formerly Knights of Success) is a university-sponsored student organization focused on community and campus service. Students who complete quests in the Knights Academy and the Knights Journey qualify for advanced standing in the Knights Community Crew.
The Knights Academy, the Knights Journey, and the Knights Community Crew combine into a system of programming focused on creating an engaging co-curricular experience for freshmen transitioning into college. This co-curricular programming is in addition to the First Year Seminar currently embedded in our institutional priority courses.
This activity is closely aligned with the following ASPIRE goal: To optimize the outcomes of the First-Year Experience (FYE) and Knights Academy programs by implementing targeted strategies to enhance academic progress, facilitate general registration, and promote registration for residential students, thereby fostering their transition to college and ensuring holistic success.
KPIs:
- Student engagement with the KA (freshmen)
- Student content completion in the KA (freshmen)
- Student participation in co-curricular activities (all students)
- Student participation in character development programming (Knights Journey)
Baseline measure: This initiative was piloted in fall’23.
- Student engagement: 28.2% of 1260 freshmen completed content within the KA; 8% average weekly engagement observed.
- Student content completion: 4.9 content items completed per participant; 1.5 quests (content areas) completed per participant
- Student participation in co-curricular activities: Total participants 4743 (fall 2022) and 7976 (fall 2023); Unique participants 1834 (fall 2022) and 2354 (fall 2023)
- Knights Journey is being piloted in fall 2024
Goal or targets (for each KPI):
- 20% improvement in student engagement in fall’24 as compared to fall’23
- 20% improvement in content completion in fall’24 as compared to fall’23
- 10% improvement in student participation in co-curricular activities in fall’24 as compared to fall’23
Current/most recent data (for each KPI):
Spring’24 update:
- Knights Academy Student Engagement – 28.7% of the 1,260 students engaged in the Fall or Spring content. Spring 2024 participation accounted for a small 0.5 % improvement over Fall 2023.
- Knights Academy Content Completion – Content completion in Spring 2024 increased to 1,814 over Fall 2023 content completion for an increase of 4.1 percent.
- Co-Curricular Participation – 28% increase from 1,171 in Spring 2023 to 1,504 unique students in Spring 2024.
After a review of the data from the Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 pilot, the decision was made to expand access to Knights Academy material beyond the Freshman class. This expansion allows students entering into their second year continued use of the material. Also, it allows the material to be used in the development of Student Success Plans and other interventions for students throughout their studies with the university.
To facilitate this broader use of the information, the Knights Academy content was moved to a more dynamic student-facing platform during the Summer of 2024. As part of the move, the Knights Academy and Knight’s Journey quests were upgraded to include improved tracking and the use of generative AI. In addition, live seminars are added to the program and coincide with the online Knights Academy quests. This move also allows for the delivery of a co-curricular transcript.
To increase participation, a digital Knights Academy campaign is also being created in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. These campaigns send content to students via a targeted email and web-based pages. This new technology allows the university to deliver needed content directly to the student, thus reducing any barriers to access.
Finally, the Knights of Success organization became Knights Community Crew, which is a student organization focused on community service. Upon completion of the Knight’s Journey and Knights Academy experiences and participation in the Knights Community Crew, students can become a Distinguished Knight.
In progress is the creation of a student recognition program. The Distinguished Knight Experience is created to encourage high achievement and student engagement in the FYE programming as well as reward students for their engagement in co-curricular activities.
MGA will focus on growing the engagement within the Knights Academy. A Director of First Year Experience was hired in April 2024. The focus during the 2024-25 academic year is to grow participation in the programming offered through the use of digital technologies currently available in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. MGA also wants to increase access to this material by embedding access to this information through student success plans and knowledge base articles available in the Student Success Hub portal. Finally, the plan is to continue growing content available to students. All these efforts should increase participation rates as compared to the previous year pilot.
Challenges:
- Student participation in the Knights Academy
- Student engagement with advisors, coaches, and faculty
- Academic Affairs, Student Success, and Student Affairs program availability
Support Needed:
- Sharing ideas and resources used by other USG institutions related to student academic communities.
