SCVNGR Treks Augment Admission Events & Tours

Soon, prospective students staring at their mobile phones on your campus may not be texting their BFFs, but participating in a game that’s designed to introduce them to the collegeand increase their interest in applying to and attending your institution.

Early adopters in admission offices across the country are experimenting with using SCVNGR, a mobile gaming platform, for a variety of admissions-related purposes. Their experience suggest that teens—and their parents—can enjoy a good challenge while they’re visiting campus and participating in other activities.

SCVNGR is used by more than 400 colleges and universities around the country—and museums like the Smithsonian, art galleries, and businesses like Dunkin Donuts. Participants in a SCVNGR trek participate in challenges (“Take a picture of the library clock and upload the image), earning points. And SCVNGR can be played on any mobile device via text message or by using a free iPhone or Android app.

A trek consists of a number of linked challenges. Participants can play casually by doing a couple of challenges. Or they can play more seriously, competing with each other to accumulate points, often in order to win prizes. 

Colleges and universities develop SCVNGR treks for many purposes, including alumni engagement. But, given the teen penchant for video games, its unsurprising that admissions offices are looking closely at it. Here are some ways in which admission offices are using SCVNGR.

Complementing In-Person Events 
Both Clarkson University and Penn State University created SCVNGR treks to give attendees at admission events something to do that’s less structured than the typical agenda.

At Clarkson our goal was to teach participants things that they wouldnt hear on a campus tour or learn throughout the rest of the day. said Jessica McPherson, a staff member in Marketing & External Relations, We had approximately 600 students and their families on campus for a jam-packed day of events. Knowing the schedule, we decided that if we were going to have a SCVNGR trek on such a busy day, it would have to coincide with event locations and stay quite simple.” The trek had five challenges in three different buildings.”

At Clarkson, at least 60 people participated, McPherson said. “We thought that was great! We even had parents playing. We were surprised that so many participants played via text message instead of with the app.” She added, “People loved the prizes and the idea that they learned something that others might not know.”

[Learn more about SCVNGR Treks at Clarkson and see SCVNGR’s case study about the Clarkson trek.]

Penn State developed a series of treks to supplement its summer visit event. Jenna Spinelle, an admission counselor, explained, “Penn State Undergraduate Admissions used SCVNGR for Spend a Summer Day. We bring almost 10,000 students and families to our University Park campus over six days in July and August to learn more about what Penn State has to offer. Our trek included challenges at some of our landmark locations around campus (the Nittany Lion Shrine, University Creamery) and other areas that we wanted to highlight (campus computer store, information fair with student organizations, etc.). Several hundred people participated over the course of six days, representing about 10 percent of total attendees.”

[Spinelle wrote about the universitys experience in Spending a Summer Day with SCVNGR.]

Augmenting (or Replacing) In-Person Tours
At Dartmouth College, SCVNGR treks are being used to augment in-person campus tours. The admissions office at Dartmouth created seven SCVNGR treks highlighting different aspects of campus life and learning so that visitors have something to do when campus tours aren’t operating.

In a post on the Wired Campus blog, Josh Keller observed that Dartmouth tours simply can’t accommodate the more than 20,000 visitors to campus every year. Using SCVNGR, Dartmouth can develop treks around special-interests like sustainability in addition to highlighting campus landmarks like the library.

John Beck Jr., senior assistant director of admissions, at Dartmouth noted, “Many low-income teens are more likely to access the internet over their phone than high-income teens, so were not shutting out a part of our population by socioeconomic means.

Other institutions, like the University of California Santa Barbara, offer links to SCVNGR right from their Campus Tours website.

Keys to Success: Swag, Marketing & Mobile Access
Both McPherson and Spinelle commented on the importance of awarding prizes for playing SCVNGR. Clarkson erected a booth in the Student Center to distribute prizes to players, handing out a variety of Clarkson items, such as Frisbees, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, and pen sets. Penn State gave a small prize to anyone who stopped by their social media table and showed that they had completed at least one challenge. Each day, they picked one person from those who had competed to receive a gift bag of Penn State and SCVNGR t‑shirts, water bottles, sunglasses, and other swag.

Advance publicity and on-site help with using SCVNGR will boost participation rates. Penn State started promoting its trek a few weeks before the actual visit day, using Facebook, Twitter and in an e‑mail reminder that went to students whod registered. Both Penn State and Clarkson produced small flyers explaining the trek and how to participate.

But on-site, in-person promotion, can help, too. McPherson notes, “We missed an opportunity to educate potential participants on SCVNGR. The accepted students had between one and two hours of downtime depending on when they arrived and registered on campus. Having a table set up next to the registration table would have been ideal to fill that void in activities and to teach students/families about SCVNGR.”

Both Penn State and Clarkson plan on expanding their use of SCVNGR next year. For those who are thinking about initiating a SCVNGR trek, McPherson advises, “Have some goals in mind, both for the outcome of the trek (were people glad they played?) and for the trek itself (what should a participant get out of playing?). Starting out, qualitative goals are equally as important as quantitative. We tried to get a lot of feedback so that we can continue to improve our treks and challenges.”

She also noted that one particular issue her rural campus faces: not all mobile phones work in Potsdam, NY. “We did not anticipate that we would have a lot of students with T‑Mobile as their wireless provider and that they would not be able to use their phones at all.” Some resourceful Clarkson students saved the day for T‑Mobile users who wanted to play SCVNGR, writing the challenges down and posting the answers for them. “The people they helped were especially grateful and we learned a valuable lesson. Next time we will print out a few challenge sheets in case this happens again.”