Wisr Ed Tech Platform Helps Universities Combat Summer Melt Amidst COVID-19 Campus Closures

By AIT News Desk On Jun 25, 2020

Company has experienced rapid growth as universities race to create stronger digital campus experiences

After doubling its list of partner schools undergoing a rapid expansion to meet the digital needs of universities during COVID-19, Cleveland software company Wisr is now working to help them reduce summer melt—the drop-off between incoming students who declare their intention to attend a University but never arrive on campus.

Enrollment numbers for fall and summer are the pressing issue facing University presidents right now, according to a recent survey from the American Council on Education. As these institutions continue to navigate the lingering effects of COVID-19, managing summer melt has never been more critical.

“Decision day wasn’t the finish line this year, it’s only one piece of the puzzle,” said Wisr CEO Kate Volzer. “Students need to feel like they are a part of the campus community long before classes begin in the fall and schools need to be communicating the value of this educational investment.”

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Wisr’s summer melt solutions help universities:

Retain new students through personal connections with their peers, faculty and staff
Build excitement by exposing students to academic and student life
Provide on-going engagement opportunities via chat modules, discussion boards, webinars, and creative summer programming
Monitor digital engagement metrics and take actionable data to keep students engaged

These solutions are proven to significantly reduce summer melt. A recent case study tracked a 29 percent reduction at the University of Chicago between 2018 and 2019, where one staff person was able to manage more than 1,200 first-year students and 60 peer advisors using Wisr’s platform.

“Before COVID-19 we were working with schools like UChicago to pivot their in-person programming to a more dynamic digital campus experience. Now, these digital tools are more important than ever as most schools are forced to redefine their entire engagement strategy for prospective, accepted, and incoming students,” Volzer added. “This summer melt teams and orientation teams are coming together on campuses to build community and confidence for the student body and are taking this time to reinvent dated orientation programs.”

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Wisr has seen a massive surge in demand for their solutions. In response, the company has worked furiously to improve the platform’s performance and add new functionality. New partner schools now include Yale, Brown, Wayne State, Duke, Colorado State and Southern Methodist Universities; who join longtime partners such as the University of Chicago in their praise of the company’s platform.

“What was so valuable to us is we only used about 15-20 percent of one staff member’s time in order to launch Wisr. And our team member was able to use her time to really help forge connections between different affinity groups on campus and build out those communities for yield and summer melt,” said Dawn Medley Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management at Wayne State University. “To date we’ve had over 2,000 students join in the various communities that we offer. I see the Wisr platform as continuing to strengthen our engagement with students this summer and moving forward as we support and engage students in a really authentic and connected way during the next recruitment cycle.”