“Then people started posting things about being accepted, and I began filling out my profile a little more,” Daily said.
Daily is part of the first class of admitted students who will be able to use the newly-added Roommate Finder feature as part of IU’s social media network, Schools App.
Associate Director of Strategic Communications and Marketing Brian Piret said his office has managed and administered Schools App since it was introduced to admitted students in 2012.
The office is now running a pilot project of Roommate Finder.
According to the Schools App website, this feature allows admitted students who plan to live on-campus to list information about themselves and their preferences for roommates, to browse listings from other students and to send private messages.
Jacqueline Fernette, director of strategic communications and marketing, said the decision to pilot Roommate Finder was made based on the fact that much of the public conversation on Schools App had been filled with posts from students seeking roommates.
She said this made it harder for official moderators to find and answer questions about other topics posted by admitted students.
“What we saw happening more and more was the feed was getting dominated by students trying to connect and find roommates,” Fernette said. “So as more and more of that conversation started filling the Schools App, we really wanted to move that conversation out of the stream so they were being able to ask a wide variety of questions, not just questions about finding roommates.”
Fernette said the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing is joining forces with Residential Programs and Services to pilot Roommate Finder. Piret said RPS worked with another provider of similar social media based roommate-finding services in past years but cut ties with them.
The team overseeing Schools App is headed by Piret.
Fernette said they are using this admissions cycle to test Roommate Finder and make sure it’s being implemented in the most beneficial way for students.
For instance, Fernette said research tells them students look for roommates most heavily during the months of April, May and June. In subsequent cycles they might push the timing of the Roommate Finder release to more closely match student preference.
Research is also being done to determine how successful Roommate Finder will be in terms of aiding students in establishing successful roommate matches. Piret said the data has already shown initial success for many admitted students.
“We’ll do some assessments and map it up against what the larger data evaluations kind of tell us,” Piret said. ”Right now we’ve got 810 people who’ve joined the network. Fifty percent of them are using Roommate Finder. And 50 percent of those have already informed us that they’ve identified a roommate.”
Fernette said Roommate Finder has worked well for other higher education institutions using Schools App.
“Roommate Finder has been in existence for several years,” Fernette said. “They’ve had great success with other University partners. So we also looked at that before we decided to go ahead and add the feature.”
Madeline Daily said she has already posted a listing on Roommate Finder in the hopes she might find someone with similar interests to herself who also wants to live at the INSPIRE Living-Learning Center at Spruce Hall.
“(Roommate Finder) has made it easy to fill out a profile with things I like and my habits hoping to find a match,” Daily said. “I just posted today asking if anyone was looking into the INSPIRE (Living-Learning Center) and I already have a few prospects.”
