After the AMS launched CampusBase in August, clubs seem to still be warming up to it.
CampusBase replaced the defunct Clubhouse system which many clubs criticized for its difficulty of use. The new platform allows students to browse through different clubs and student organizations and lets clubs manage memberships, engage with students and form group pages and discussion forums.
Clubs raised many issues such as user friendliness and submission form errors with Clubhouse.
Eventually, the AMS decided that it was no longer financially viable to sustain the Clubhouse system and retired it, replacing it with CampusBase hoping to not only provide a solution to these problems but also transition to a virtual orientation event this year.
- AMS CampusBase is replacing Clubhouse. One new feature is access to 40,000 students’ personal emails.
- Virtual community building: With orientation programming online, students adjust plans, expectations
“We are still in the process of collecting some early feedback from clubs, but AMS CampusBase has definitely taken significant strides in solving the challenges that Clubhouse presented,” AMS VP Administration Sylvester Mensah Jr said.
For Faizan Hasan, president of the UBC Social Enterprise Club, CampusBase is a step up despite a learning curve.
“It’s definitely more along the lines of what we needed to better run the club and engage students,” said Hasan in a message to The Ubyssey. “Clubhouse lacked the social/engagement aspect. We're still getting to grips with it and figuring how to best utilize it.”
On the whole, Hasan said that CampusBase did solve some issues such as keeping things more up to date.
“It takes some getting used to, and there are still some bugs that need to be worked out for us to use it more. We so far have only been using it for boothing, and will be using it in the foreseeable future to promote our events.”
However, he said CampusBase has a lot more components than Clubhouse and he wished that he had received an orientation session beforehand on how to use it.
When asked about club uptake, Mensah said that over 80 per cent of clubs are active on the platform with 450 present on the platform in total.
Clubs can better advertise themselves on CampusBase, which Mensah said was a “significant step up from Clubhouse.” Form submission has also been running more smoothly.
“We have been able to handle lots of volume through CampusBase so far. It’s also great to see that some clubs are leveraging this feature as well.”
This year’s Imagine Day main event took place virtually on the platform after UBC changed the format of its in-person orientation events.
However, there were some issues with servers at Campus Groups, the company that runs CampusBase, since this was the largest event to take place on Campus Groups’s platform with 75,000 booth visits over one week and over 11,000 users logging in on Imagine Day.
Mensah said the company told the AMS afterward “that having been through this experience, they are better prepared for future events.”