Unibuddy at the Heart of National College of Ireland’s Leadership Program

Challenge: Provide a cost-effective connected experience for NCI’s ‘Young Future Leaders’ program

Open to students sixteen years old and above, National College of Ireland (NCI)’s  ‘Young Future Leaders’ program aims to set students up for success by teaching global leadership skills. This program also empowers young students to build connections with their international peers, get a taste of what university life is like, and be aware of NCI’s undergraduate programs. 

Brenda de Azevedo, NCI’s Digital Marketing Executive, and Michael Shiel, NCI’s Regional Executive for Far East Asia, wanted to create a high-quality, cost-effective, and connected experience for students enrolled in the program.

Solution: Leverage Unibuddy’s comprehensive platform for better program engagement

From hosting online lectures to enabling global network connections, Unibuddy’s comprehensive platform offered a solution for each touchpoint of NCI’s ‘Young Future Leaders’  program.

De Azevedo and Shiel utilized Unibuddy peer-to-peer, student-to-student, platform to create an efficient and cost-effective integrated solution. Since NCI was already using Unibuddy to support other higher ed initiatives, their team saved on additional costs and time while simultaneously creating an engaging and secure atmosphere for empowering future higher ed students.  

Through Unibuddy, NCI’s team hosted multiple digital lectures focused on leadership development. These live sessions were followed with invitations for young students to join NCI’s online group of their peers via Unibuddy Community. Through Community, young students were encouraged to  share what they learned in their lectures, with a focus on connecting with other students enrolled in the program.

The ability to connect students regardless of location through Unibuddy Community was a major selling point for the NCI team. Young students described Unibuddy as “friendly” and “almost always active.” The NCI team were also impressed with the level of secure access administrators were granted within Unibuddy Community, ensuring student safety at every step. In particular, NCI liked the passive oversight of group conversations, with opportunities to contribute where necessary – empowering young students to create authentic connections through private groups.

NCI also encouraged program participants to reach out to current students at their school through peer-to-peer, one-on-one, connections through Unibuddy Chat. Although the program’s core mission is to inspire and drive higher ed aspirations in young students, students are also encouraged to learn more about student life at NCI. In this lens, the program serves as an early top-of-funnel recruitment tool, keeping NCI top-of-mind when these students are ready to begin looking into higher ed.

Results: NCI gains 340 high-value student leads for future enrollment efforts

Of the 1,000 particpants in NCI’s program, 29% were recognized as highly engaged (e.g. attended all seminars and events, joined the official NCI Unibuddy Community and completed a final certification quiz). As a result, NCI is thrilled to have gained over 340 strong student leads from this initiative. NCI has plans to continue engaging these students with subsequent information about their options at NCI, future events, and initiatives in the hopes that they might consider NCI as an option in years to come.

This integrated approach to leveraging all aspects of the Unibuddy Platform resulted in a seamless experience for NCI administrators, current students, and prospective students alike. “It would have taken at least a week of our team’s valuable time to set up a brand new platform from scratch,” said de Azevedo. “With Unibuddy Community, it was quick, easy, and could be built directly out of our existing Unibuddy dashboard.”

Unibuddy’s all-in-one solution also allowed students to focus on shared content and higher ed connections made without needing to learn new system and software. This, in turn, created a one-stop-shop for all the resources students needed in their program. 

Learn about how NCI boosted international student enrollment by 30% with the help of Unibuddy Community.