The MU Engage Implementation Team plans on joining two previous programs, OrgSync and Campus Labs, together to create a new platform to help students better connect to campus opportunities: MU Engage. Their hopes are to have the program released next semester.
“MU Engage is a student engagement platform that enables students to connect to campus, discover co-curricular opportunities and develop a portfolio of those experiences including organization memberships, event participation, leadership positions and community service,” Sr. Student Services Coordinator Sara Rubinstein said in an email.
According to the Implementation Team’s website, MU Engage will be a combination of OrgSync’s best features as well as newer technology that will act as a tool for students, allowing them to become more engaged in campus organizations and allowing these organizations to better manage and promote themselves.
“It allows MU to better assess student engagement and learning outcomes across campus to ensure we are providing meaningful opportunities that enhance a student’s learning,” Rubinstein said in an email. “It also provides student organizations and programs a suite of user-friendly, management and communication tools.”
As a member of the Implementation Team, Rubinstein is eager to introduce some of the newer features of MU Engage to students and looks forward to its release.
“Student organizations will now have the ability to create and manage elections within their portals,” Rubenstein said in an email. “It is wonderful to be able to provide them with these new tools to secure, automate, and expedite the election process within their organization.”
As the university has been exploring MU Engage, so have organization leaders. Avid OrgSync users, such as Missouri Students Association members and leaders, will have to learn the ropes to an entirely new website. Among those MSA leaders is Senate speaker Jacob Addington.
“Everything that we do, whether it be Senate reports or voting, is done on our OrgSync page…so that’s going to be a bit of a learning curve for us,” Addington said.
In an effort to aid in the transition process, MU was sending organization leaders emails with links to tutorial videos, but stopped once they decided not to continue with the transition until the second semester of this year.
“We’ll be doing a soft launch at the beginning of next semester, so that way, we can get the kinks out,” Addington said.
As they prepare to launch the new system, the Implementation Team is working to ensure the transition from OrgSync to MU Engage will be smooth for student organizations.
“The implementation team has been working since this summer to learn the new system and begin setting up our new community, branches and processes,” Rubinstein said in an email.
“Our goal is to make the transition as smooth as possible for individual students, organizations and staff.”
To prevent complications in the transition process, Rubinstein advises for current organizations to update any information they currently have to ensure it is correctly transcribed onto MU Engage.
“The main thing organizations can be doing now to prepare for the migration is to keep their rosters, events, and portals as up-to-date as possible,” Rubinstein said in an email. “This will help minimize the time needed for data migration and ensure the most accurate information is transferred and available in Engage at launch.”
MU organization leaders are unsure how MU Engage will differ from OrgSync, as they have only seen the tutorial videos and haven’t used its interface, but they are optimistic.
“The website itself looks a lot cleaner. It’s a lot more user-friendly, but again, you can’t really know those things until you’re actually using it,” Addington said.
