Student portals are a critical piece of higher education technology and a solution almost every institution has. A good student portal is a powerful tool for student success. The trick is keeping the portal useful, engaging, and modern so that students actually want to use it.
In this blog, we will cover:
- The problem with student portals today
- Reimagining student portals with Pathify
- How Pathify works: Introducing FLOW
- PortalGuard x Pathify: Creating a secure and personalized online experience
For a deeper dive, watch this month’s masterclass:
Key Components of a Stellar Student Portal
Key topics that will be discussed:
- Latest developments in student portal technology
- Must-have features of a modern student portal
- How to drive adoption and meet evolving student needs
- Reimagining the student portal with Pathify
The Problem with Student Portals Today
Hardware innovation has evolved much faster than we anticipated — especially in education, from computer labs to iPads. Conversely, software has not seen nearly as much growth, particularly when it comes to student portals.
To understand the problem with student portals, think about any modern system you log into today (Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, social media platforms). Most, if not all, will offer users a personalized experience. This means giving people information that is interesting and relevant to them, including things they have signed up for and things they want to get notified about. This type of personalization is what students interact with everyday and, therefore, what they expect when it comes to navigating the online environment at their academic institution.
However, the education space hasn’t stayed quite up to speed. You may find portals that look like link farms and those that notify students about everything that’s happening on campus. Portals with low adoption rates all share one thing in common — the lack of personalization. Because students are constantly bombarded with non-relevant information and struggle to find the things they need, they become overwhelmed and will disengage easily. Ask yourself this: would you continue to use a portal if you had to do a treasure hunt to find that piece of content you need every day? Students want the online experience to be personalized like in the real world and provide them with quick access to the things they need whenever they need it.
Reimagining Student Portals with Pathify
Pathify (previously known as Ucroo/Campus) is dedicated to creating a student portal that goes beyond the traditional portal experience — from its social media-inspired UI and mobile/web parity to its deep levels of personalization and robust integrations. The Pathify student portal — also called the Engagement Hub — combines a user-centric portal with vital communication channels and community-building features in a single, modern interface. This combination gives students everything they need to shape their college experience and achieve academic success. Whether you’re attracting prospective students, keeping current students on track, or engaging with your alumni community, Pathify can help create a more engaging and personalized experience.
How Pathify Works: Introducing FLOW
At the heart of Pathify is a proprietary middleware called FLOW that integrates all your systems and translates them into the data you see in the Engagement Hub, including tasks, notifications, widgets, notices, resources, and analytics (see Diagram A). FLOW is what makes Pathify unique as it can retrieve any data point, system, application, or tool you have — using API, flat files, DB queries, and RSS feeds — and consolidates the information to present the user with what is most important.
Because of FLOW, Pathify can exponentially reduce the number of integrations needed between your systems, ending the pain of point-to-point integration, improving efficiency, and lowering costs. Data is also shareable across your ecosystem, so you'll be able to report on everything you need — whether you’re looking to mine student success indicators or determine how staff are using systems.
Diagram A: FLOW integrates system data in one place and makes it shareable across your ecosystem.
With all your systems and data integrated into one view, Pathify is able to create a personalized experience for each user. Every user that initially logs into the platform gets a profile, with data retrieved from the student information system (SIS) serving as the baseline (student ID, student name, major). Pathify then retrieves additional information across various systems and adds them to the user profile, including data from learning management systems (LMS), customer relationship management (CRM), authentication platforms (PortalGuard), Office Suite, and calendars (see Diagram B).
Diagram B: Example of a student profile with data retrieved from various systems.
To learn more about how Pathify works and see a live demo, watch this month’s masterclass: Key Components of a Stellar Student Portal
PortalGuard x Pathify: Creating a Secure and Personalized Online Experience
BIO-key has been teaming up with Pathify to provide a secure and personalized online experience for users in the higher education space.
With the added pressure from cyber insurance companies that are requiring multi-factor authentication (MFA) for renewals and quotes, many institutions are now mandating MFA solutions for students, faculty, and staff. However, pressuring users to enable MFA for their login while offering a one-size-fits-all authentication method can quickly result in frustration. Students, faculty, and staff all want flexible authentication options. For example, students may prefer a phone-based option, while faculty members don’t always carry smartphones on-campus.
The ideal MFA solution should focus on the flexibility and usability of authentication methods, which is precisely why many of our education customers have chosen to add PortalGuard MFA to their Pathify integrations. Click here to learn more about Pathify integrations.
Key Takeaway
Are you delivering the online experience your students expect today? To power better learning experiences and community engagement, institutions need to personalize student portals by consolidating information to allow students to stay focused on what matters most. With robust integration that can connect any system, application, and solution, Pathify is one of the best solutions in the market that delivers a user-centered student portal that meets expectations.
