BuddyPress implementations are growing year-over-year but it’s always neat to find a somewhat non-conventional use that really shines.
For example, the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) recently was voted to be one of the top 10 most innovative schools because of their implementation of BuddyPress for admissions, beating out the likes of Harvard for a higher slot in the ranking:
The college admissions process is a painful experience for many hopeful students, filled with strict guidelines and often unhelpful officials.
But the Milwaukee School of Engineering may have developed the solution. Their Bridge program is an original approach to the process of applying to college. Following the model of social media, the program serves as a way for applicants to create a profile and connect with admissions counselors, other applicants, and students to share advice and information.
In the past, this function has been served by third-party websites; but the benefit of MSOE’s program is the school can maintain the accuracy of the information on a medium (the internet) where inaccuracy abounds.
James Davidson, shares his thoughts via the BuddyPress blog on how they achieved not only the honor but an increased level of admission for their school – approximately a full-third increase year-over-year:
We built MSOE Bridge on WordPress and BuddyPress, and we’ve made a number of enhancements and upgrades since launch; perhaps the coolest feature is the integration work our team did with BuddyPress and MSOE’s existing Admission System of Record/Intake process (Jenzabar ERP).
We take a prospective student’s BuddyPress community profile (student record) and link it directly with a custom PHP Application Form we built. From here, we built an integration process that takes the student profile and application form, and bi-directionally sync it with the student record in the ERP.
This allows MSOE to correlate how a social interaction in Bridge is driving real measurable business outcomes for MSOE.
This is incredible press for the likes of WordPress and BuddyPress where a real-life and very practical outcome from an inventive implementation creates incredible value for everyone across the board.
Here’s a video overview of the implementation as well:
http://youtu.be/ANJ4ZjuEUhU
I’m passionate about education and the advancement of instruction and better ways of teaching in every form having two graduate degrees myself – pretty pumped about this development project and how it really shined a light on the power of Buddypress.
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