Seeking to boost worrisome college graduation rates, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a brand-new, $2 million dollar investment into the education technology firm Inigral to aid development of its Schools App system.
The social media-based platform takes its cue from Facebook itself in terms of helping facilitate the creation of online communities between college students in order to enhance their sense of belonging and overall integration into the university itself.
The overall goal of this program is to keep new students thoroughly engaged enough with each other to stave off dropping out and help boost enrollment as well. By utilizing Facebook's own platform, developers are hoping that students' familiarity with the overall system will speed up their own software's adoption by this targeted demographic.
For colleges to adopt School Apps for themselves, Inigral charges a basic fee for school-specific website construction however if successful, the institutions can easily recover this expenditure via increased student retention, initial enrollment, and tuition fees.
The Schools Apps platform itself is then able to connect students to various organizations and clubs on campus, discuss important issues, and otherwise fully integrate both their academic and social interests.
Thus far, Arizona State University has experimented with the program leading to early indications that students engaged with School Apps in their first semester appear more likely to return for further education.