Adopt a phased launch approach

Review how a phased launch approach helps your uConnect platform evolve naturally over time

Shannon Desmond avatar
Written by Shannon Desmond
Updated over a week ago

What does it mean to have a phased launch?

Simply put, adopting a phased launch means publishing part of your site early, while other areas of the platform are still in development. Specific Career or Affinity Communities you’ve already built content for can be set live and published, while your team works to add other Communities over time.

In addition to Communities, the uConnect team can take select content types live during a phased launch, including jobs, resources, blogs, and more. Additional content types can be launched whenever you’re ready.

We encourage everyone to adopt a phased launch approach to ensure students feel supported as your platform continuously evolves to meet new campus initiatives and opportunities!

Daniel Pascoe Aguilar, Associate Provost for Immersive Learning and Career Design at Drew University, states, “What I've appreciated the most of my partnership with uConnect at different institutions is our mutually motivated exploration of a systemic perspective of our work. If in truth we are in the business of preparing a diverse next generation of leaders that graduates with a purpose, that knows the value of DEI in our decision-making and performance, and that is ready to address the systemic crises we are facing, progressively thinking and doing what we do as big, integrated, and innovative as possible is paramount. This means that a uConnect platform should be thought of as a launching pad, as an opportunity to enhance our potential and evolve with our students, our on/off-campus community members, and our job and academic markets.”

Further highlighting the value of a phased launch and continuing to evolve your platform to meet student needs, Pascoe states, “As you build your website, I thus strongly recommend taking a look at what our sister institutions are developing in their uConnect platforms, start with what is sustainable to you and your organization (to enhance the comprehensiveness and integration of your virtual presence, to involve your community members as systemically as possible, and to scale your student engagement as inclusively and equitably as possible), and use your uConnect website as the platform for the ongoing development of your strategic work.”

What does a phased launch look like?

If you’d like to publish an Arts and Entertainment Community for example, and currently have a short description along with employers to feature on the page, we can take this Community live with its description and employers, and plan to incorporate other content types into the Community later on. Doing so allows students who are interested in arts and entertainment to access a sample of key opportunities tailored to their interests while your team works to add other content into the backend of the platform, releasing information as it’s ready.

The beauty of a phased launch approach is that your team can still collaborate with one another behind the scenes, working to add more information to a Community in the backend of your platform, without students and other community members ever knowing a Community is under construction! Resources, blogs, events, and other content types can be tagged to a pre-existing Community, and once you’re ready to have a specific content type featured on the front end, all you’ll need to do is message our support team at support@gouconnect.com, letting us know to enable the widget to set any content types you identify live!

For questions regarding phased launches, feel free to reach out to support@gouconnect.com for more information!

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