The path to success is a game, says Dr. Daniel Pascoe.
And with the software his team in the University of Oregon Division of Student Life is developing, this fall it’ll be a game for every student on campus.
The Registrar has declared all attendance data—what events students show up at, workshops, etc.—university information, and the University has been working on ways they can track that data and use it for Student Life.
But Pascoe and his team want to use that data for students, too. When students start swiping their cards and getting tracked at events this fall, a new program will be putting that information into a program called UO Advantage.
The university is developing UO Advantage to turn student experiences into a comprehensive journal, portfolio and resume, and starting this fall, it’s going to start tracking every student’s extracurriculars—whether they ask or not.
“GPA is not what gets students the jobs that they want,” Pascoe said. “You are at a time in life where you are making your story. Be intentional about how you’re making your story, be thoughtful about it, be strategic about it, make it in a way that’s planned, that uses all the resources you have available—here’s a tool that can help you do this.”
That story, to Pascoe, is made up of experiences. UO Advantage is going to be a way to collect, categorize and present experiences in a way that potential employers can understand.
By selling the program with a game-like interface, the Career Center hopes to get students more into the process.
Here’s how it works: Each event has different outcomes, in the form of badges. These are things like “intellectual and interpersonal skills,” “connecting ideas,” “reflective thinking” and “problem solving,” according to Jonathan Lidbeck, a programmer working on UO Advantage.
These outcomes get unlocked and developed over time as the student adds more experiences, like internships and lectures. Professionals can even rate students from one to four stars on different outcomes, or give them endorsements (which work like achievements).
“The career and professional development of UO students cannot be delegated to the Career Center,” Pascoe said. “Every professor should think about it, every staff member, every student.”
At each point during that process, the student is encouraged to journal and reflect about the experiences—which might sound cheesy, but beta tester and senior Christina Demarinis said the software made her wish she had more record of her volunteerism from freshman year. Demarinis is one of forty student beta and alpha testers.
All these experiences—or just the ones the student wants potential employers to see—are put into a report the student can print out and show to employers. Then, at job fairs, potential employers can see exactly what skills the student has.
Every student will have a UO Advantage account tracking their data–students can opt out if they really want to—but no one will be looking at private data, according to Assessment GTF Adam Shen. The Career Center hopes to get it to the point where bot aggregators managing the interface will be the only ones looking at that data.
“The higher level of automation, the lower level of any threats to identity or privacy exposure,” Shen said.
A previous version of this article made assertions about software other universities were using that wasn’t in the same vein as UO Advantage. These assertions were not backed up with research from the Career Center or the Emerald. That previous version also said that the system does not have an opt-out option. The data Student Life is gathering is not an opt-out system, but UO Advantage is. The previous version of the article also stated that bot aggregators are the only ones looking at that data–currently, staff programmers will be looking at that data, but they hope to make the system fully automated.

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UO “gamifies” success with UO Advantage