The use of digital screens on university campus
“Students just expect digital… digital is not the future, it’s the present.” – Nigel Smith, Head of Content at Future Learn
Every business needs a means to communicate with its audience and the higher education sector is no different. Universities compete with one another for more students, better completion rates, higher student satisfaction scores, but they are also competing for novel ways to communicate with new and current students and retain long-term focus from the student body. Why? Because the ability to capture and maintain the attention of students can lead to a variety of optimistic outcomes: greater attendance at events, more volunteers for extra-curricular activities, less confusion about functional information (e.g., where to be for a lecture), greater opportunities for student-led feedback and more. This combination would be expected to have a positive impact on student engagement and sense of belonging, both of which are vital predicters of overall student satisfaction.
In the past, universities were limited in the ways that they could communicate with their students. Important messages would be passed on during lectures and seminars when staff had a captive audience, and leaflets distributed across campus to advertise upcoming events. These days, however, the means of communication are vastly more creative. Emails can be scheduled or automatically sent to students at different touchpoints of the student journey, as well as text messages, both of which can direct students towards a specific call to action (CTA): a website, an event, a survey and so on. Social media has become a highly important tool too, with many universities adapting their tone of voice on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok to become friendly, approachable, fun, and jumping on trending topics or memes that their target audience might be engaging with.
A channel that cannot be overlooked is the digital screen: a fundamental tool for most universities in the modern era. Digital screens are placed around campus, in buildings that students typically spend time in, e.g., the library. An online system is used to schedule messages on these screens, with managers able to select how long a message is shown for and how many messages are rotated round in an hour or a day.
Research suggest that the average attention span of humans is rapidly reducing and is now thought to be approximately 8 seconds. Eight single seconds to get your message across and have a meaningful impact on your audience. Digital screen messaging can be tailored with these findings in mind, with content flashing up and disappearing after 8 seconds.
The nature of the content would no doubt have an effect on how well the message is received; for example, a functional prompt for students such as ‘Don’t forget to register for the Christmas Party’ could serve as a useful reminder, resulting in a tangible action (registering for the event), but a digital screen message displaying cumbersome text such as a snippet of an article or an interview with a staff member may lose the audience’s attention in even less than 8 seconds. Hence, it would be counterproductive to display such a message. We have also learned that most people will detach from a communication channel if they feel it no longer serves them, so keeping content both relevant and helpful is a must for digital screens.
In my experience, digital screens are fantastic when providing functional, ‘to-do’ information to those wandering by, but not so engaging when they try to do much more. I also think digital screens can be too passive; hoping to catch the attention of passing students as they go about their day and hoping that in the short amount of time that a message is shown for, that the key information is absorbed by the student. It also frustrates the analytical part of my brain as there is no real way to determine who has seen the message and what the outcome was; we can’t look at click-through rates, open rates, or CTAs… we can only assume that a portion of our audience is finding the content useful. Equally, sometimes, we can only assume a portion of our event attendees found out about their event from a digital screen.
Now, that’s not to say that by being more ‘passive’ than a targeted and ever-evolving email campaign, digital screens can’t also be extremely productive. I spoke with the Student Engagement Manager who works at Middlesex University – an institution that considers student satisfaction to be one of their top priorities – and she provided a very positive insight into the team’s use of digital screens:
“We find digital screens really useful for keeping students updated with all the exciting events and activities happening across campus, as well as relaying important information and key updates. Information can be updated quickly and easily should last minute changes take place!
We have digital screens in all the main spaces across our large North London campus, so students are more likely to see at least one or two in an average day. They provide such a great way to communicate on top of sending emails, which can be overlooked during busy times. Another benefit is the sustainability aspect – we don’t have to use posters that requite paper and are often quickly discarded!”
Recent research implies that young people today (Gen Z) care more about sustainability and the environment than the generations before them and are more likely to consider the environment when buying certain products. To avoid alienating or disappointing our audience, it would seem sensible to align with their passion and prioritise sustainability when assessing how we communicate with our students.
“Innovation needs to be part of your culture. Consumers are transforming and if we don’t catch up, we’re in trouble.” – Ian Schafer
Perhaps one way to ‘catch up’ with our consumers is to continue the journey with our students after they have seen the message on the digital screen, with the aim of prolonging engagement. A useful way to do this could be displaying a QR code on the screen that students can capture on their phone camera, or having short, memorable URLs that students visit easily. These QR codes, for example, could lead the student to a website page that has more information about an event, or a form to fill out to join a new society. The important thing to remember is that the conversation between us and the students doesn’t need to end when the student looks away from the digital screen. Most successful communications have a direct call to action, whether this is clicking on a link, pressing play on a video, adding an item to your basket, or downloading a form to fill out. With QR codes, digital screens can adhere to this principle and direct users towards a mutually beneficial end goal. It’s also incredibly positive for analytics, an area I touched upon earlier, as us marketers or communication experts can then track exactly how many people visited a specific website from that QR code, which, in turn, provides a real insight into how effective the digital screen is, or has the potential to be.
Adding to the environmental benefit of digital screens is the undeniable cost benefit. Since the coronavirus pandemic, the higher education sector has been hit badly by budget cuts and we are seeing financial struggles across universities worldwide. Saving printing and design costs for posters, banners, and other material signage by swapping these for permanently placed digital screens is a quick and easy way to reduce expenditure.
It’s useful to consider which time of day would be best to show messaging on digital screens, depending on the habits of your audience. Research typically shows that in the morning, people have the least amount of screen fatigue, which would suggest that messages displayed on a screen can be absorbed more effectively at that time. Similarly, a screen positioned in a café where students are chatting and relaxing may be ideally placed to capture their passing eye, but screens in a library, where students are focused on their assignments (and looking at another screen), are in danger of being overlooked.
Myself and my colleague recently conducted a focus group at Ravensbourne University where we asked for qualitative feedback on the use of digital screens as a communication method. One thing that stuck with me was the difference between what students want to see versus what we in the marketing or communications department think students want to see. Whilst we were speculating that they would want to hear about recent news stories, student successes and be provided with functional information, the students fed back to us that there’s one thing they would like to see more of on screens: events. They would much rather learn about an event from looking at a screen they’re walking past, then be bombarded with unnecessary emails and notifications about it. Our group of students were all in agreement that less is more on the screens; they would prefer a sentence summarising the upcoming event or activity and another sentence explaining how to register.
I found this very interesting - having worked in communications and student engagement teams all my career – it would seem that our students do want to engage, they just want to find the simplest route to enable them to do so.
Previously, when I worked at King’s College, digital screens were not hugely prioritised in our communications plans. This is because feedback had taught us that our students don’t pay much attention to them, which left me wondering if this is because King’s College is not a campus-based university, and instead has multiple, smaller ‘campuses’ across London and students are often between two or three in an average week. I think perhaps digital screens work best in campus universities, where there is a tight knit community of staff and students, as well as areas of campus that we can pinpoint as being regularly frequented. Maybe for larger universities that do not have that ‘campus feel’, where it is harder to predict the footsteps of prototypical student, more traditional methods of communication could surpass digital screens.
The use of digital screens, especially in tandem with iPads, is a clear and effective way to manage entry to events, perhaps explaining why it is commonly adopted by staff and student society presidents across hundreds of universities to both organise events properly, but also check students in and keep track of numbers. The secondary benefit of this is data collection; once we have students’ numbers, we can send text messages to notify them of upcoming similar events or email them to inform them when the next society meeting is taking place. We can use push notifications here which, according to recent research, are checked more frequently than email notifications, especially when from student organisations, which 72% of students tend to view as spam. Many other studies suggest similar findings: that email communications are often overlooked or just are not the fastest way to grab attention, implying that email is perhaps becoming an outdated channel when talking with the students of today. Push notifications exploit the relationship that most young people have with their smartphones, the regular checking of the notification tray and the pop-ups featuring on locked screens. There is no reason why digital screens can’t keep abreast with these developments too, we just need to understand how to grab attention and then sustain it, and perhaps navigating off one screen (digital) and onto another (phone) is the simplest way to do so.
In summary, there is a lot to consider when assessing the use of digital screens in the higher education space – from the message itself, the timing, to the location of the screen, financial and environmental considerations, and the type of institution using them. Despite the inability to consistently measure their effectiveness, and the ever-increasing screen fatigue that young people are experiencing, it would be a mistake to not prioritise digital screens as a communication method. With a tiny environmental footprint and an open door on creative designs available, digital screens are a modern tool in more than just one way.
Encouraging students to attend events, join societies, and take part in co-curricular activities is a consistent formula when looking at how to increase student engagement. The staff and the students I spoke to when writing this article all agreed on one thing – digital screens are effective when advertising these opportunities to students. Simplicity might be preferred, but that is one thing that the digital screen can indeed achieve.