Points System Drives Participation at Lamar University

While Lamar’s student organizations were actively using CampusGroups for administrative tasks, Student Organization Services lacked visibility into the broader engagement of these groups. Key challenges included:

• Unclear participation levels: It was difficult to know which organizations were engaged in events and activities beyond basic administration.

• Balancing fairness: Larger groups often had a built-in advantage in participation-based initiatives.

• Tracking off-platform engagement: The team needed a consistent, scalable way to measure both online and offline involvement.

To address these challenges, Lamar customized the Points feature in CampusGroups to create a participation-based incentive program. The initiative aimed to:

1. Increase group participation in campus events like athletic games, orientations, recruiting events, and leadership trainings.

2. Reward organizations based on participation, not attendance numbers, ensuring smaller groups could compete fairly.

3. Collect actionable engagement data to measure and analyze student group involvement.

The team researched best practices from peer institutions, and observed that leading programs awarded points for actions such as registering organizations, attending events that foster belonging, submitting service hours, or participating in leadership development opportunities.

• Points are awarded manually or automatically through completion rules (e.g., creating events, tracking attendance, submitting forms).

• Categories were developed to align with Lamar’s priorities: administrative tasks, platform engagement, and campus participation.

• Points were assigned based on difficulty and importance, with clear, measurable criteria for each activity.

The team implemented tier levels (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Red & White) to incentivize consistent engagement, resetting points each semester and carrying over tier benefits from the prior term.

The success of the Points Program has transformed how Lamar engages student organizations, making participation measurable, meaningful, and motivating. Next, the university plans to pilot a campus-wide version of the program for individual students, further strengthening its culture of involvement and community.