By Mira Radovich, Senior Contributing Writer
At a traditional in-person university, the primary gathering place on campus is the student union. This building typically serves as the hub of student activity, a place where students meet, eat, study, and engage with other students.
At Rio Salado College, our hub of student activity is also a student union. Only our union is virtual.
RioConnect, launched in 2021, provides students with a centralized online community meeting space.
“There are not many opportunities for online students to meet each other or have meaningful engagement,” said Sasha Flores, project manager for Rio Salado’s Strategy and Advancement division. “Rio Salado created RioConnect to address the challenge of limited connections among students in asynchronous learning environments.”
All Rio Salado students have 24/7 access to RioConnect through their online student portal. Once there, students can post their messages in one of several topic areas such as books/materials, introduce yourself, courses/coursework, homework help and health and wellness.
Now in its third year, RioConnect is thriving, seeing more than 15,500 active members, hundreds of posts and thousands of views each month.
Here is a recent sampling of Rio student interactions on RioConnect.
Meeting Fellow Students
On July 13, 2024, student TM introduced herself on RioConnect: “I am a new college student starting this journey at 50 years old. I am in the medical field now and am here to decide which other part of the medical field I want to pursue. I look forward to asking you all a lot of questions and sharing this journey with the community.”
Student MW replied: “Pleasure to meet you. I am not far behind you in age, returning to school after seeing the decline in my current career. I’ve been a pharmacy technician for the last 24 years in a small town. In my community, we have no luck keeping long term medical providers so I have modified my goal to become a physician’s assistant.”
Seeking Advice
On July 29, 2024, student AH posed this question: “If you're already committed to two classes, would you be interested in exploring the possibility of adding a third? Just asking. I'm debating.”
Student AK chimed in with her opinion: “I’ve taken 4, 3, and 2 classes at a time, all while working full time. For where I'm at with my degree and job, two at a time works best for me because I am able to build in lots of breaks during my school time. I say go for it if you're feeling up for it. There are withdrawal dates if you feel too overwhelmed too early on in the semester.”
Forming a Study Group
On July 5, 2024, student JE asked: “Would anyone currently enrolled in MAT 152 this summer like to form a study group?”
Student ES replied: “Send me an email!”
Students Benefit from Engagement
Thanks to RioConnect, these students were able to make acquaintances, find other students with similar backgrounds, share stories, seek guidance, commiserate, communicate and even just vent…all online.
Tools like RioConnect are helping to eliminate the isolation that students may feel while pursuing an online education and promote a sense of community and camaraderie.
Flores shared that Rio is already planning on enhancing RioConnect with additional message channels and thematic groups for students.
“We are also planning to launch co-curricular communities around paralegal studies and justice studies so those students have an organic place to connect with one another,” she said.
With RioConnect, Rio Salado has the “meet, study and connect” aspects of the traditional student union covered. However, if you are still looking for a place to eat, we highly recommend the Café at Rio in Tempe.
New to Rio Salado?
Joining RioConnect is easy. Simply log into RioLearn with your MEID and password. On your home page, click the “RioConnect” button on the left menu under your name. You can also download the mobile app, available for both iOS and Android.