What if there was a way to gather information about E-Day visitors – accurately – without cumbersome spreadsheet programs or Qualtrics? What if there was an easy way for prospective students and their families to create their own department tour schedules?
It was.
Garon Griffiths, manager of the Auburn Engineering Design and Innovation Center (Makerspace), and Matthew Clegg, a second-year software engineering student, used the latest computer software tools—including Javascript, PHP, HTML, and cascading style sheets—to create a painless application to feb . 23rdE-Day registration and data collection easier than before for 3371 registered visitors.
“We always want students who attend the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering to leave our campus wanting to come back,” said Jessica Taylor, director of recruitment and scholarship in the Office of Recruitment, Outreach and Scholarship. “E-Day is a large-scale recruitment event. The E-Day registration system created by Matthew and Garon has completely transformed the E-Day experience for prospective students. The system allows students to tailor their own itinerary and I think that directly affects their experience. Ninety-eight participants had a positive experience on campus this February. The registration system plays a big role in these statistics.”
It started with an idea.
“Sydney Riley, K-12 Outreach Program Administrator, works tirelessly to ensure this event is second to none,” Taylor said. “A few years ago, Sydney came to me to explore changing the registration system. She had a vision and wanted each individual to have the opportunity to tailor their schedule for the day. We met with several suppliers, but none could do exactly what we needed.”
Enter the Makerspace.
“We had a meeting and found out that they (Outreach) were going to use spreadsheets and try to work it all out themselves,” Griffiths said. “I immediately understood that it would be a big tax and I didn’t want them to suffer because of it. I approached them and said, ‘Matthew and I recently designed a website for a Makerspace. We have experience with that. Maybe we can make things a lot easier.’”
Griffiths managed the visitor view of the app, while Clegg programmed the administrative side. Visitors registered for tours remotely or via home computers/laptops and data was automatically sent to Outreach.
“There was a lot of trial and error and it was a very intense process,” said Clegg, an Auburn native. “We were given the assignment in early October and by December 1st visitors had the opportunity to fill in their demographic information and sign up for any tours they wanted, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and so on, and the dates they wanted for those tours. . They made their whole schedule.
“It’s very useful to take some of the knowledge I’ve picked up from what I’ve learned in lectures and turn around and apply it to something that we can give back to the university. This is especially cool because I’ve come full circle with E-Day – I attended one here when I was in about ninth grade.”
“We are delighted to have been able to contribute to the continued success of E-Day,” said Griffiths.