App Available to AAMU Students, Faculty

National higher education publication Inside Higher Ed recently shared a survey that shows many college students feel they miss out on getting involved in campus events and activities because they just don’t know about them. It also highlights that this is not the case at AAMU.

“We have a platform that allows students and student groups to do a variety of things to keep a connection on campus," says Cameron Gildersleeve. "Everyone knows what events are going on, what’s happening next, where's the move, what are some things to do.”

A senior biology major, Gildersleeve is the student administrator for Presence, a premiere campus engagement platform for higher education. Modern Campus, the industry's leading learner engagement platform runs Presence. It says the App provides institutions with a centralized location to manage and automate processes, engage more students, track and collect engagement data and assess behaviors and trends.

“We now require all organizations to register through Presence," said Gildersleeve. "We have 72 active student organizations registered, including our D9, our social groups, and student-led organizations. It’s a way that we can reach all 6,000 plus students.”

Gildersleeve says every organization has a page on the platform, which allows them to do more than just publicize an event.

“If you want to take general attendance, just scan your QR code and everybody knows that you signed in," he said. "You can send surveys and send post updates to your event. If you change locations, you just change it once in the app and it changes for everyone. It can also collect your attendance, so it’s really a one stop shop.”

All students are auto enrolled in Presence. Anyone with an A-number can access campus information. AAMU has around 4,000 active users. Users can create a log in here with your university email and A number. 

“AAMU Student Activities and our Student Activities Board were faced with the task of engaging students after the pandemic," he said. "We knew we could use Presence, and this year we brought it back to the forefront. It’s not that we didn’t use it before, it just wasn’t as visible.”

“We would like the faculty to sign up as well, because oftentimes they say ‘Oh, I wish I would have known about that event!’ If you’re on the Presence app, you get that update and you can scroll through the app and see what’s happening this week, next week, the entire year. A student can upload a faculty flyer, send it, and it would post to the app. Everything the University puts out can also be seen in the Presence app. We have direct uploads from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, the University website, even LinkedIn is on there.”

Gildersleeve says student activities works with ITS every semester to enroll and update the platform, which has four other administrators as well. It automatically unenrolls students when they graduate. He says the platform provides students with a personalized campus experience.

“If you want to get involved with a group but don’t know who to contact, just get on the app, find the group name, and all of their contact information is there. The president of the group, the advisers, everything students need is right there.”