Throughout this article, we've linked to relevant MSL support pages where you can find more detailed guidance. You'll need to be logged in as a current MSL customer to access some of these pages.

40 Ways Digital Can Support Student Engagement

Student engagement is rarely created by one major initiative. It's usually built through many small moments throughout the student journey.

A new member might find useful information before arriving, discover a community, buy a ticket for an event, contact their Rep or find support when they need it.

Digital systems don't create those experiences on their own. Students, staff, officers, representatives and student leaders do that. But the right digital setup can remove unnecessary steps, make opportunities easier to find and help organisations understand what is happening.

Here are 40 practical ways digital can support that work.

Download   40-tips-in-40-minutes-for-supporting-student-engagement

Arrival and access

For many unions, Welcome planning will already be well underway by the time results season arrives. Even so, it's still worth looking at the whole pre-arrival journey and asking where digital could make things clearer or easier for new students. This might be a small change you can make now or something to build into next year's planning.

1. Create a dedicated Welcome Hub or adapt your homepage for Welcome.

This could be a separate Welcome Hub or microsite, or with some pre-planning, a temporary homepage template with stronger signposting for new students.

Think events, joining information, FAQs, support, maps and ways to get involved.

MSL can provide a free, customisable Welcome skin and page templates for your site. Contact us if you'd like to find out more.

2. Use SSO for early account creation where possible.

Early SSO account creation can allow students to log in before they appear in the usual student data import. This needs to be configured with MSL, so customers interested in enabling it should get in touch with us.

3. Capture Student ID on registration pages.

Where SSO is not yet available to new students, capturing Student ID can help temporary accounts be matched and merged with official student records later.

Contact MSL's support team to have the Student ID field enabled as either a mandatory or optional field on your registration page.

These are small setup decisions, but they can make it much easier for students to begin engaging straight away.

Belonging and communities

Your members aren't always looking for a particular society or group by name. Often, they are simply trying to find people they have something in common with.

4. Let students browse by interest, not just through an A–Z list.

5. Create flexible community spaces, not only traditional student group pages.

These could support sports clubs, liberation groups, campaigns, academic associations, postgraduate networks, international communities and more.

6. Use attributes to show useful group information.

Attributes can highlight things such as awards, accreditation or completed committee training without overcomplicating the page.

7. Make joining or opting in simple.

Interest and profile choices can also be used behind the scenes to populate mailing lists or groups, helping your members receive more relevant content later.

Events and participation

Once someone has found an event they want to attend, the route to booking should be as straightforward as possible.

8. Reduce unnecessary booking steps.

Think clear event information, obvious ticket options and a simple journey from finding the event to buying a ticket.

9. Offer payment methods students already use.

For organisations using Stripe Connect, options such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and Alipay can help, particularly for international students who may not yet have a UK bank card.

Contact us if you're interested in adding Stripe Connect as a payment gateway on your site.

10. Give students one clear place to view their booked events.

Event List personalisation can be used to create a "My Events" page where logged-in students can see events they've bought tickets for, alongside relevant events from groups they belong to. See Displaying Events for further guidance.

MSL can also enable event reminders, allowing purchasers to receive a reminder before an event. Customers interested in using this feature can get in touch with us.

On the day itself, different events will need different entry processes.

11. Use the most appropriate admission method for the event.

This could be an e-ticket, card swipe, name search or another suitable route.

For more information about card scanning, see Scanning University Cards, and for information about e-tickets, see Event E-Tickets.

12. Support on-the-door ticket sales from a mobile device where needed.

13. Record attendance, not just bookings.

Booking shows intention; attendance tells you who actually came.

14. Use self-check-in or guest list routes for free or non-ticketed events.

Whatever system you are using, it is also worth thinking about how attendance data gets back into your main system.

Even if arrivals are being recorded in a spreadsheet, that information can still be useful afterwards. With MSL, for example, Import Members List can be used to bring attendees into a list. Where Door Entry or another integrated method is being used, attendance can be captured automatically.

The important thing is not to leave useful attendance data sitting separately if it can help build a clearer picture of participation.

Keeping opportunities visible

Welcome may create the first connection, but students can discover something new at any point in the year.

15. Use automatically populated mailing lists for targeted communications.

16. Surface relevant opportunities throughout the year.

17. Send automated welcome messages when students join key groups.

Automatically populated lists can support communications based on group membership, course, year of study, committee role or interests. You can also set up automated welcome messages for students joining particular groups. Find out more about setting up welcome messages here.

The aim isn't to send more messages. It's to make each one more useful and relevant.

Representation and feedback

Strong representation structures can still be difficult for students to understand from the outside.

18. Make Reps easy to find.

19. Explain the representation structure clearly.

20. Give each Rep a useful online presence.

Find My Rep pages can make that structure more visible and give students a clearer route to the right person.

21. Show incoming Reps before their role officially begins.

Grouped member lists can include pending memberships, allowing incoming Reps to appear before their new role starts. The same approach can support incoming committee members and smoother handovers.

Once students have found their Rep, the next step is to give them a clear way to share feedback.

22. Put feedback routes where students already find their Rep.

23. Track feedback status and progress.

24. Close the feedback loop.

A student can find their Rep, submit feedback and have it allocated to the appropriate person. Reps can message the student for more information and work with staff, officers or others to resolve or escalate the issue.

Students can also submit general feedback and view their previous submissions in one place. If you'd like more information about the Feedback module and how it could work alongside your representation structure, contact us.

Ideas and student-led improvement

Feedback often relates to something a student has already experienced. Ideas give members a chance to suggest what should happen next.

25. Give students a visible place to suggest improvements.

26. Allow voting and discussion.

27. Keep members updated as ideas progress.

The Ideas tools give students a visible place to submit suggestions, vote and join the discussion. Find out more about Ideas and other Student Voice tools here.

Admins can comment on an idea regardless of the area settings or its current status. Even if an idea has expired or moved to a stage where members can no longer comment, admins can still post progress updates and explain what is happening.

Where an idea can't be taken forward, a clear explanation is still better than leaving members wondering what happened.

Support, wellbeing and Advice

Support covers much more than formal Advice.

Your members may need help with housing, money, academic issues or complaints, but they might also be looking for wellbeing activities, peer support, a buddy scheme or somewhere to connect.

28. Bring support information together in one clear area.

29. Surface wellbeing events automatically using event types.

Event widgets can use event types to surface relevant activities automatically, keeping pages up to date without each event needing to be added manually.

30. Include peer support and buddy schemes alongside formal Advice.

Not every student needs formal Advice. Sometimes, connecting with another student is the most helpful next step.

UWL Students' Union's Buddy Scheme shows how this can work in practice. Students can create a buddy profile, browse other profiles and get in touch through peer-to-peer messaging. If you're interested in offering something similar, we may be able to make elements of this functionality available on your MSL System. Contact us for more information.

31. Use Advice trends to keep support content relevant.

If Advice teams begin seeing more cases around a particular issue, that may highlight a need for clearer online guidance.

Advice data can also help identify wider issues.

32. Use consistent case categories.

33. Record outcomes and maintain audit trails.

34. Build evidence continuously for service improvement, campaigns and accreditation.

Student Case Manager can help teams categorise cases, record outcomes, maintain an audit trail and report on recurring themes.

Customers can also get in touch with MSL when they need changes to areas such as case categories, configuration or closure outcomes, so the setup can continue to reflect the way their service works.

One case may need individual support. A pattern of similar cases may suggest a wider service, campaign or policy response.

Skills and achievement

Students develop valuable skills through committee roles, representation, volunteering, campaigns and events, but they don't always recognise or record them.

35. Create a Skills Framework that reflects your organisation.

36. Record roles, hours, training and responsibilities.

Skills and hours do not have to be limited to traditional volunteering. Activity types can also recognise Academic Reps, Committee Members and other student leaders so the time spent supporting peers is not missed.

37. Give students credible evidence through HEAR, certificates and achievement records.

Downloadable skills records, HEAR data, certificates, volunteering hours and training records can help students explain what they did, what they contributed and what they learned.

If you're interested in enabling HEAR functionality on your MSL System, get in touch with us for more information.

Democracy

Every union has its own democratic structures and election rules. Digital can support participation across the whole process.

38. Use digital to support participation across the election journey.

This can include clear election pages, mobile-friendly nominations and voting, candidate profiles, manifestos, custom referendum choices and automatic election counts.

Referendum choices can be tailored to the question being asked rather than being limited to standard options such as "Yes", "No" and "Abstain", or "For" and "Against".

Automatic counts can be particularly useful where student groups or common rooms create and run their own elections, reducing the need to wait for staff to complete the count. For more information about enabling automatic election counts, see How to Request Auto Count.

Afterwards, officer pages and updates can help students see what their elected representatives are working on.

Insight and reporting

No single interaction defines engagement.

For one student, engagement might mean leading a student group. For another, it might mean using Advice at a crucial point. For someone else, it might be submitting one piece of feedback that leads to change.

39. Define your own engagement markers and start with the question you want to answer.

Digital can surface activity through reports, dashboards, filters and breakdowns, but each organisation decides what matters and adds the context needed to interpret the results.

A report may show that one school has fewer recorded interactions, but it doesn't explain why. Timetables, placements, awareness, data gaps or other local factors may all play a part.

The strongest reporting starts with the question you want to answer, not the dashboard you happen to have. If you already have engagement markers in mind, contact us to discuss how a bespoke engagement report could bring that data together and make it easier to explore.

Graduation and beyond

The relationship with the Students’ Union doesn't necessarily end at graduation.

40. Make it easy for alumni and supporters to give back.

MSL's donation product type supports a suggested donation amount that the donor can change. Donations can be made to an individual student group or to the Students' Union as a whole. Let us know if you'd like donation products enabled on your MSL System.

There are lots of ways to keep that relationship going. University of Gloucestershire Students’ Union’s Friends of UoGSU area gives people a way to sign up for updates and donate, while Bucks Students’ Union has developed its own alumni approach.

Keele Students’ Union also makes donation options available directly on individual student group pages, giving supporters the option to contribute to a particular community.

One overall message

Your members won't remember every email, webpage or system they used, but they will remember whether they felt welcome, connected with other people, found it easy to take part, had their voice heard, knew where to find support and recognised what they achieved.

Digital can't create those experiences on its own. It can, however, make them easier to access, manage, connect and evidence.

Student engagement is built through lots of small moments. Thoughtful digital support can help more of those moments happen.