Improving the Hogeschool Utrecht student journey

The collaboration between the HU and Intractive

The cooperation started with a pilot project to introduce new students to the city and campus. For both Utrecht and Amersfoort. Virtual experiences that were easy to launch through the website, newsletters and direct emails to students. It quickly proved a success with over 800 users in the first month and an average rating of 4.6 stars. 

This success sparked a much more extensive collaboration with a total of more than 10 experiences spread across the student journey. All with the goal of introducing remote students to the environment, a faculty and even specific programs in a fun way.

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Faculty/domain experiences

We started with 5 experiences to get acquainted with the different faculties/domains. Letting students experience whether a domain suits them and encouraging them to register for an (online) open day. In this collaboration, we worked intensively with the marketing and communications team to come up with simple but fun scripts. 

In 8 weeks we launched a fully interactive platform including the previously created introduction and the 5 domain experiences.

Experiences for specific study programs

After launch, it was clear that there were also programs that wanted their own experiences. Experiences for a little further in the student journey, for those who already have a specific interest in the program. Discovering in a fun way whether the program actually suits their needs and wishes. 

A trigger to do further active research yourself and provide the first step towards enrolment. In total, we collaborated with 5 programs to create an experience. Click here for an example of the Creative Business program.

Results of the collaboration

During the pandemic, the experiences were already successful with an average of 15 users per day and a completion rate of more than 50%. But the remarkable thing is that the experiences became much more successful after the pandemic. During the 2022-2023 college year, there were an average of 45 users per day, an average engagement rate of 81% and a screen time of 9 minutes.

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Possible follow-up to improve student journey

The collaboration was very successful and discussions are currently underway to further improve the student journey based on the Intractive platform. From the best first impression with an experience about the USPs of the HU to an on-site tour during the open days. Or even a whole pre-boarding platform.

The Intractive platform has evolved so much in the time span of this collaboration that the HU can largely develop these experiences themselves, or even with help of students. But of course, the Intractive studio team remains ready to help.

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