A new event suggestion system launching this year may be a game changer for campus life at NAIT. Chris Black, NAITSA Student Involvement Coordinator, and his team have been working to implement an algorithm-based system to curate and suggest events for NAIT students via email.
When Black started in his role, he started doing data analytics and wondered how to better use some of that data. “We had this awesome data, how can we do more with that? And how can we really enhance that student experience with the limited resources that we have?Jennifer Sieben, Campus Life Director at NAITSA, then suggested having a feature that curates events for individual students.
Students often have difficulty finding events based on their interests, and Black knows that NAITSA is still missing communicating with some students. Therefore, the core feature of this system is to recommend upcoming and ongoing events on campus to students based on their earlier involvement history to enhance the student’s on-campus experience.
Originally, the team wanted to build a Microsoft Teams chatbot to recommend events on demand that recommends events on demand and sends regular suggestions. However, the team chose email because of a number of uncertainties in Microsoft Teams functionality.
The system is built upon two algorithms, where the first looks at the students’ history of event attendance across campus. However, if a student does not have any campus event history, the second algorithm comes into the scene to recommend campus events based on key demographic information, like the program that the student is enrolled in. Black explained that the algorithms complement each other and use a dual approach to get the desired end result.
The core developer of the project is Carlos Marquez, a NAIT student from the Bachelor of Applied Information System Technology program, who spent his practicum working alongside Black at NAITSA on various projects. While the whole functionality is built using Python, some .NET and cURL were used to deliver the emails.
The algorithm is being tested with over 2500 students already receiving the event suggestions. Black is happy with the results so far; the emails average a 6.87 per cent click through rate, which Black said is quite high. “You’re doing well if you’re over 2 per cent on email marketing. So we’re very happy with that, specifically because this wasn’t an email that students opt-in to.”
Black shared that their hope is to add another school to this testing program in the Winter 2025 semester. The Ooks Life app will stay reserved for more important updates for now, while there is a possibility of synchronization of these features in the long run.
The project team is actively looking for any kind of feedback on the functionality. Students who have received these emails can provide anonymous feedback by clicking the feedback survey link in any of those emails or emailing Black directly at cblack@nait.ca.
Cover photo by Roiel Carlos
