At the beginning of the 2016 fall semester Robert Morris University began using REVOLUTION. The program came about through a partnership between Robert Morris and OrgSync, which allows students to interact with clubs and organizations through online portals.

“We have booked over 1,000 events through REVOLUTION, we have 5,181 students using the system, we have 193 portals active and they are all active, they’re all being used,” said John Locke, the director of student activities and leadership development. “We have a variety of different groups using this program in a way to suit their needs.”

Most people interviewed had a favorable view of REVOLUTION citing the ability to use it find out events on campus.

“I look at it every day, it’s kind of like my Facebook in the morning now because I’m kind of sick of Facebook,” said Danielle Rodriguez, a freshman. “I look to see what’s going on on campus today, maybe within the upcoming days to see if there is anything I want to do.”

The goal of REVOLUTION still remains the same, to keep information on what students are doing on campus and eventually to completely integrate the data REVOLUTION collects into the Student Engagement Transcript (SET).

“We are hoping to gather more and more data through card swipes. We are also working with our IT department to be sure we have the most accurate, clean data so we can effectively track student involvement,” said Locke “The thing that will change soon is that the Student Engagement Transcript, the SET, will be 100% housed in REVOLUTION.”

When REVOLUTION first launched every student was given an account through their Sentry Secured account and freshman were required to log on as part of their First Year Seminar course. Although their are some students who haven’t logged on since.

“I think I logged into it once, ” said senior, John Russo. “I think it is good in its general sense, like you can kind of see your activities and different things, like how you get timed for going to events to go towards SET credit because before I don’t know if you even could see that like how much time you have. I don’t really have any reason to consistently go into it for clubs or anything like that.”

Not all students enjoy using REVOLUTION saying there are other applications that do what REVOLUTION does, but better. Some say it might even be easier if REVOLUTION found a way to integrate applications that make tasks less difficult.

“I just don’t like it. There are better programs out there for some of the things it does but some of the things it does very well,” said junior Justin Marsteller, the vice president of Phi Delta Theta. “Specifically, from my perspective the task sharing to go a little more in detail. I’m a business major not like a coder or anything like that but to maybe go to other applications like Asana or Google Slack and sort of take what’s good from them and sort of see, ‘Hey, this is how they break it down.’ These are apps used by professional businesses and say this is how they do it, this is how this works—maybe get some creative inspiration instead of having this real clunky, real meh system.”

Revolution can be found by following the link HERE and any questions can be directed to Student Life found HERE.