Category: Clay High School – Team A

Two ideas are testing the most compelling and engaging medium for informing would-be Clay students about all the school has to offer.  If we take a step back from the medium to the message, you think about what would be most important for a deciding middle school or junior high student to hear.  Who would they want to hear it from?  How would they like to receive that message (in-person, through social media, etc.).  Similarly for a parent.  Different messages and different ways to deliver that content.  I know you team has already done some work around identifying what the student and parent care about, so you could go deeper here and prototype types of messages and visuals.

To engage with the population, public places like the grocery story will give you a broad brush, but tough to find your direct target.  Perhaps look at track meets, baseball games, or other after school events for middle school or junior high kids where you will have kids and parents to engage with.

For improvements to aesthetics of Clay, maybe play around with prioritizing the what and the how in buckets of ‘no to low cost’ and more expensive.  What would the Clay students want to do if money was no object.  If they could hardly spend any money?  Would they want to be involved themselves, like school-approved graffiti?  Are their images from other schools that have done something similar that you could use to invoke the discussion?

Keep up the thoughtful work here team!  You are making great progress!

Meant to address the prototype setting, tenets of testing, and feedback activities for our three major ideation focuses.

Connect Clay: The Bridge Program

Consider the Setting –   

The setting for this solution is Clay High School. The goal is to expose our “target user” – middle school students– to all that Clay has to offer. The more time those middle school students spend at Clay, with Clay mentors, with Clay teachers, in Clay programs, the more likely they are to develop a desire to attend CHS. Human nature is to tend towards continuity, so we must provide that continuity and we must build that bond. Connect Clay is the way to do that.

Define What to Test:

With the Connect Clay program, we need to assess whether or not students would be willing to participate in the programs, and if it would affect the way that they think about Clay.

Questions:

Would going to a program like this improve your perception of Clay?

Would you tell your parents about a program like this?

Would you like to participate in such a program? If not, what kind of program would you like to see?

Define Feedback Activities:

In order to gather this feedback, we could put out interest surveys about these hypothetical programs.

We could station ourselves in a public space (grocery store area? Public library?) and ask passersby if they would be interested in participating in the programs to extract community opinions.  

Conduct “exit” interviews with seniors at Clay to see if they would have liked such programming.

Video Marketing Approach:

Consider the Setting –   

The Video Marketing Approach that we will be taking takes place at any platform where video can be played, from informational sessions to social media.

Ideally, it will be shown in the classrooms at Clay and at local middle schools.

Finally, we want the video to be posted on social media platforms, reaching students and parents through word of mouth.

Define What to Test –

Whether a video will have any impact on what potential Clay students and parents think about CHS. What kinds of impact might it have? Will people believe the video?  

If other parents, neighbors, family friends sent their children to CHS, would that affect your opinion of CHS? Would you consider sending your child to Clay as a result?

Ask administrators if such a program is possible? Ask parents if they would be willing to help out with such a program? See if any FTT students would be interested in overseeing project.

• Questions:
  • What did you think of the video’s message?
  • What setting did you view the video in?
  • Does the video help you change your perception of Clay?

Define Feedback Activities:

Conduct a survey following the presentation of the video to ask about effectiveness.

Play the video for non-CHS students and ask them if they would go to school there?

Ask middle school students if a video might have impacted their school choice?

Offering Opportunities // Building a Better CHS

Consider the Setting –   

Building a Better CHS has to do with utilizing the school’s current art resources, its students to make the school environment be one that students will want to study in. Thus, the setting is within the school, and the people involved in this setting are the current CHS students.  

Define What to Test –

We need to test how students would feel about the changes to their learning environment/school? Also if they would have a more positive outlook on Clay if they were proud of how their school looked.

• Questions:
  • Would students be interested in participating in this project?
  • Does the way the school looks influence how a student feels about the school?
  • Do the students want more color in their hallways?

Define Feedback Activities:

Survey the current students on their thoughts on the state of the school.

Find pictures from other schools that have creative/colorful environments and show those to current students to gather their opinions.

User value Criteria:

1. Availability of relatable touchpoints
2. Accessibility
3. Effectiveness of engagement

Provider value Criteria:

1. Ability to monitor progress and performance
2. Cost-friendliness
3. Ease of implementation

Solution Evaluation Matrix:

User Value Criteria

Provider Value Criteria

As you begin thinking about how to get feedback on your ideas, keep your Point of View Statement in mind.  From your presentation I understand this to possibly be, “Middle school kids that are not in a ‘Clay-Feeder School’ need to uncover how great Clay High School is in a way that makes them feel compelled to pursue their dreams in a unique way and to be a part of something amazing through CHS.”

For your Prototype Plan, think about how you can test the various facets of your ideas.  What will you test and how?  Where will you test your ideas?  Who will you test them with?  And when?

IDEATION SUMMARY:   

For the following three central ideas, the team tried to combine several of our ideas to achieve the most likely ideas to prototype. We also tried to achieve a wide variety of focuses.

Connect with Clay: (AKA Bridge Program)

The Connect Clay Program would establish concrete ways in which CHS students could interact with the community and middle school students. The more connected CHS is, the more positive commentary will circle and the more powerful word of mouth will be.

• Tutoring of Advanced Clay Students (ACADEMICS)
• Student Social Media Post Day (MEDIA)
• Boys and Girls Club Connection (
• Clay Sports Teams Sponsor Teams of Younger Kids (SPORTS)
• Inviting Middle School/Elementary School Students to Act in Musicals/Plays (THEATRE)
• Hosting Art Classes for People in the Community? (ART)

Entice: Advertise in middle schools, use art teachers, athletic coaches to go into the schools to encourage students to come and develop their skills. Sell them on building a connection with Clay to do work that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. SELL CONTINUITY

Enter: Get students enrolled in camps, classes during the summer

Engage: Make sure they receive good coaching, good teaching etc

Exit: At end of summer, lesson, give a speech to encourage them to continue coming back and to continue this journey at Clay high school. Students voice to their parents that they want to attend Clay High School

Extend: Reviews, ripple effect, students who go through the program through word of mouth encourage other students to attend.

Offering Opportunities // Building a Better CHS

A large part of the solution is focusing on marketing and how people find out about Clay, but we also wanted to touch on potential ways to improve Clay itself so that students want to stay there and tell their friends to go there.

One of these ideas was some sort of ND Connection. This could include tutors from ND coming to Clay and helping with academics, or ND art students working on joint projects with CHS students.

Another potential recommendation was to improve the physical appearance of CHS. Our recommendation for this was to paint the lockers and add some color to the slightly drab hallways in that way.

Another option, Hire better teachers, counsellors, tutoring, better coaches, fight song, identity, etc. And pair teachers with students.

Entice: Attractive facilities of the school will entice students to attend Clay.

Enter: The feeling that the school looks nice and has a good ambience will encourage students to enroll in Clay High School

Engage: Students need to feel engaged in their passions and their education. They need to feel like they are equipped to accomplish their goals: job or college. They also need to feel proud of being a CHS student.

Exit: Need to feel Nostalgia and look back on time at CHS with pride and. They need to miss being at CHS, the connections, the family

Extend: The positive experience at CHS then gets passed along through word of mouth and Clay has an identity.

Other Options:

• South Bend Connection?
• Advanced Students tutoring average students

Marketing Approach

Our primary idea for a marketing approach is a video that shows what a day in the life of CHS is like, and makes students excited to go to a school like Clay.

• Video
  • Show it in the middle schools
  • CHS informational day
  • Send to Counselors
  • Mass Social Media Post

Entice: Students are more visually engaged than brochures and informational talks, and having that information explained through a video format readily available would be more effective of a tool.

Enter: The video would distributed through social media platforms or at the beginning of an informational session about Clay.

Engage: The video would demonstrate the various types of students, following them through their daily life and what their 4 years would look like.

Exit: The video ends with a pitch specifying that the student watching the video should really consider Clay as an option and recommend them to pursue more resources to find out more about CHS.

Extend: Students, excited by the video, share the video amongst their friends, maybe to try and convince them to look at Clay with them all together.

• Other Options:

• Virtual Tour
• Synchronize materials

• Parents commit to telling their friends.

Great work identifying the range of patterns.  There are certainly some basic and obvious needs uncovered around being a safe environment for example, but I am thinking the interesting innovations will come from identifying the specific opportunities of impacting the decision – by parent and child.  We choose a school because it is the best for us to help us accomplish our goals… so those may be career-based (what college could I get in to?), skills-based (what job can I get right away?), or social-pressure based (just doing what your peers do – great note on how this varies based on the district).  How does Clay compare with other Art Magnets in the country?