Residence life and education, residential curriculum and curricular approaches, student housing, and technology.
In episode 7 of Roompact's series on residence life and education during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Paul Brown discusses the importance of real-time assessment. Although always a useful exercise, it becomes increasingly important during the COVID-19 pandemic. Being able to get information back quickly to inform daily decisions can allow you to adapt more quickly... Continue Reading →
In episode 6 of Roompact's series on residence life and education during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Paul Brown discusses concern about how we can adequately prepare students for careers post-pandemic, particularly for graduating seniors. What are the realities of a job search right now?How might you adjust your learning objectives?How can you partner with career... Continue Reading →
In episode 5 of Roompact's series on residence life and education during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Paul Brown discusses how intentional conversations as a strategy in your engagement with students can be especially useful during this time. Intentional Conversations are one-on-one meetings between student staff and residents that are guided by a suggested set of... Continue Reading →
In episode 4 of Roompact's series on residence life and education during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Paul Brown discusses how text messaging can help in engaging and communicating with your residents. Even before the pandemic, text messaging was a highly effective way of communicating with residents, often yielding better read and respond rates over email.... Continue Reading →
In episode 3 of Roompact's series on residence life and education during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Paul Brown discusses trends he's seeing in the adoption of technology and software tools to help staff navigate this unusual time. He also muses on ways this will impact residence life practice in the future, even when the pandemic... Continue Reading →
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a unique challenge for maintaining residential education and campus community in a time of social distancing and abrupt transitions to online and hybridized learning format. The role of residential education, however, is more critical than ever. Aiding students in identifying support networks, making connections with others, and the sharing of timely and... Continue Reading →
It is amazing how quickly our work has evolved in such a short period of time. As the above animated GIF shows (originally produced as a video by the team at BestReviews), many of our former paper-based and manual processes have moved to digital.  What is perhaps most striking is how so much of our lives have... Continue Reading →
The start of the academic year means that we welcome a new group of students to campus. It is a seminal time for many students, and their first year, in particular, can bring forward a number of rapid developmental changes. As peer leaders in their communities, resident assistants can heavily influence, and shape these student... Continue Reading →
Roompact "Perspective" posts are opportunities for individual staff members to work out ideas and provide their individual thoughts and opinions on a given topic. Now, more than ever, residence life professionals are competing for students' time. Technological change has brought about a revolution of choice for self directing one's learning and a multitude options for... Continue Reading →
At Roompact, we love technology. We are, after all, a software company. But we also love learning. Our main mission is to enhance the educational experience in the residence halls and to enhance learning for all students. We do this through providing both student and educator-facing tools. Sometimes our tools help make processes more efficient, so that... Continue Reading →
I came of age in residence life alongside digital technology and the World Wide Web. My first professional position was as a First Year Advisor in the Office of Residence Life and New Student Programs at Miami University 2002. At that time, our department was on the cutting edge. We had our own in-house-developed web... Continue Reading →
Steve Jobs famously referred to Apple's work as being at the intersection of liberal arts and technology. At Roompact, we view our work similarly. Every day we collaborate with educators looking to enhance the residential experience of college and university students worldwide through the use of technology. When the Roompact team recently got together for our mid-year retreat,... Continue Reading →
