Community engagement and prompting?

I'm reflecting on a post here by @barb-mcgrath. Some of what was raised applies to how we're running our programmes.

People who have completed a course and those who have not have access to our Community for various reasons, but the issue for me isn't so much about who gets access to what. That's something we've figured out.

The issue is that it is not visible enough to the learners.

As an example; We've created a new community for people who have completed a specific type of course with us that will assist them in their new role as Mental Health First Aiders. A few of us 'admins' are starting to populate content and discussions, but unless people are alerted, for example, with a weekly summary of something, no one knows what's being posted.

I was thinking about using the Announcements feature on a weekly basis to keep everyone up to date on what was going on in the community.

The other is a suggestion (see images). Could there be an opportunity to have the 'number' next to 'Unread' in the Community also sit at the top bar in 'Community', so people would see it every time they log in? In this Community here, I have 42 unread posts, but I only know that when I come into the community.

People, more than ever, need to be nudged, reminded, and have it put in front of them. We can ask them to participate until the cows come home, but after 10 minutes, it's out of sight, out of mind.

Thoughts, ideas anyone? I'm going to try the weekly summary announcement for now and see how I get on.

Catherine

Hey @catherine-eadie funny timing that you post this. I was wondering something similar yesterday. I've been posting in my community but unless I drive someone to the Community, no one else is posting.

In my live session yesterday I asked if people were getting the notifications and everyone told me no. Nor are they checking for notifications.

I completely "get" why no one would want an email for every new post! And as creators we would not want to tag everyone, everytime we make a post.

I love your idea of using Announcements! ❤️ I use announcements regularly and one thing I've discovered is they are great for people who are IN the course but don't do anything to prompt someone to login to the course.

I also use the email campaigns for non-marketing type messages but because they come from "Get Found Academy" people are passing them by. IE not opening them I'm not sure if I can change WHO the messages come from?

I seem to recall that Heights is working on a weekly digest, the 'everyone' tag and reactions to posts. A community off a social media platform is hard. People go to social to be entertained but going to an off-social community takes commitment.

In the 2 off social communities I am a part of, both have weekly digests. One is manually created and sent the other is automatic. The challenge right now is there is so little activity ~ what would even go in the summary other than, "I posted this and I posted that."😂😂

That's interesting to hear about your experience of the notifications. Most of our learners are the same, they completely ignore the bell and I think quite a lot receive emails into their junk/spam folders. Email overwhelm is also very common but I just need to keep plugging away at it.

I wonder if 'pop-ups' might be more useful during their learning?

I link a number of our community threads to the lessons so that there is a connection between the two and the introductions are working really well that way. The lesson asks them to introduce themselves in the community. But then no-one goes back later on!

Hmm, @heights-platform do you want us to tag you when we are talking about you? 🤣

@catherine-eadie-c42f5df0-7bdc-4a46-8126-bcffb5dfa717 these are great points. We're considering an unread count on the community link just like you described. We are also working on options for mentioning @everyone in the community and for digest emails as Barb mentioned. I wanted to see if there was anything else we could announce about this, but not quite yet. I agree this is important areas like this will be a big focus for us this year!

@barb-mcgrath hahaha, we've all been very busy preparing for more announcements about new Heights AI features.

@heights-platform That sounds great, at the end of the day, it's all work in progress with engagement. We understand that people's concentration, focus, and availability/time is a real challenge; we simply need to experiment with ways to engage without overwhelming people and allowing people to opt-out of communications if they are truly uninterested.

@barb-mcgrath 🤣

@catherine-eadie-c42f5df0-7bdc-4a46-8126-bcffb5dfa717 we just snuck an unread number badge onto the community link in the top navigation this morning as you requested.

Let us know what you think!

@heights-platform Ooooh! Thank YOU so much for that 🙏

That's awesome! Love it. thank you!

@heights-platform How does the "unread" badge work? Will new users see that there are hundreds of messages they haven't read yet?

@paul-colaianni the unread badge currently shows the same post count displayed on the unread link on the community sidebar. New students will see a count of total posts when they first join, but to be clear, like the unread section of the sidebar, the count is of posts that are unread, not total comments. So if 1 post has 30 new comments, it only counts as 1 unread post.

A member can always click "mark all as read" shortly after joining, but we're experimenting with showing this number of unread posts even for brand new users to 1. incentivize them to investigate the community, and 2. so that new members have the chance to go through previous community posts at their own pace, being able to easily see what they haven't taken a look at yet.

@heights-platform Ah, thanks so much. Makes sense.

And wow, what's going on with my tag? It's crazy!
"@paul-colaianni-112dcb09-ce7a-4e30-a7a3-9f5ecc6f50c0"

@paul-colaianni the tag is because it looks like you have two student accounts here and so this second one generated a longer unique tag. If you email us we can help you to merge these accounts if you prefer!

@barb-mcgrath please email our team about this and provide us with an example of a student's email that you believe is seeing something they shouldn't. If you are putting community channels in a bundle, then those messages shouldn't be visible to students who don't have the bundle. Thanks!

@heights-platform Could just add a "-1" to my name LOL :D
I will email. Thank you!