Volunteer State Community College Case Study

Leslie Smith is the Manager of the Access Center at Volunteer State Community College (Vol State), an institution where 93% of the student body would be considered non-traditional (e.g. first generation, working, aged 22+).

With 36 years of experience in disability services, she has been a passionate champion for student success since joining Volunteer State Community College (Vol State) and a strategic advocate for her diverse student cohort, which consists of 38% first generation and 73% working students.

Leslie has spearheaded the evolution of note taking skills development on campus, transforming it from an accommodation for a few into an indispensable, institution wide tool that has improved retention by 11%.

Since many of her non-traditional students are considered to be at a greater risk for dropout or failure, Leslie has demonstrated the significant value that learning technologies such as Genio can have in boosting her student’s knowledge, increasing their skills and improving their confidence.

Collectively, this has led to more effective learning and greater student engagement across Vol State.

The challenge for Vol State

In 2019, the Vice President of Academic Affairs approached Leslie with a challenge: faculty were frustrated and overburdened by the process of finding peer notetakers for students with disabilities.

The system was fundamentally flawed. As a college with an open admissions policy, many student notetakers were not strong students themselves, making the accommodation unreliable and ineffective.

Leslie’s initial analysis showed that paying a $50 stipend to peer notetakers for the 90 students who qualified would be far more expensive than purchasing a technology-based solution.

This led to the college moving to Genio, first with 25 licenses before increasing that figure to 250. Genio had an intuitive UI, a mobile app, and kept students more engaged by asking them to take, organize, and refine their own notes, rather than doing the work for them or relying on peer notetakers, increasing student uptake.

However, adoption was still not where Vol State wanted it to be, until they learned the reason why.

“We more than doubled our usage of the students who used it, but it was far less, only about 20% of the number of licenses we had... the feedback we got from students was that they felt very self-conscious and insecure using it.

They felt it outed them as a student with a disability. If they had students who asked about it, they'd have to say, 'you have to be a student in the access center to use it'”.

This feedback became the driving force behind a new vision. The goal shifted from simply providing better accommodations to implementing a universal tool that could support every student on campus.

Leslie aimed to boost the overall student experience, increase engagement in class, and enhance learning effectiveness to directly address the institutional strategic goal of improving student retention.

The solution was to pursue an institution wide license, making Genio an equitable resource available to all. This way, any student could benefit from Genio and students with accommodations wouldn’t have a spotlight on them.

Securing buy-in

Engaging faculty was a critical part of the process. Leslie began by forming an alliance with the Faculty Senate Chair, who became a "super big supporter". At her suggestion, they held an introductory session during convocation week, but the meeting was tense.

"It was a pretty contentious discussion. There were a lot of faculty who didn't understand it. They thought that it was going to be something that was going to do all the work for students".

During the debate, faculty allies spoke up, reminding their peers that students were already recording lectures on their phones. Likewise, they reminded them that Genio doesn't do all the work for the student, ensuring academic integrity and the right level of productive friction. Following this, the funding committee required Leslie’s team to conduct a faculty survey to ensure their voices were heard before they would approve permanent funding.

While students weren't consulted on the initial decision, their feedback was the catalyst for the institution wide model.

Once the trial was approved, the team launched a robust campaign to drive adoption. This included:

• A strategic email campaign: Using Slate, they sent a mass email in July to all students already registered for the fall. The system then automatically sent the same email to every new student the moment they registered for classes, continuing through the first week of the semester.
• Engaging parents and students: At campus orientation events, the team presented Genio not just as an accessibility tool, but as a resource for every student. Parents became "a big influencer," encouraging their children to sign up.
• Creative resource fairs: At campus resource fairs, the Manager of Student Engagement and Support organized a scavenger hunt that required students to visit every table for a signature. This created a captive audience. When students approached their Access Center table saying, "I don't need to know about your services," the team would reply, "we have something that's available to you, too" and introduce them to Genio.