PROJECT:

PAUSE

Role: Social Media Coordinator

PAUSE (Psychology Association of Undergraduate Studies at Erindale) is a student-run association that offers events and opportunities geared towards undergraduate students in the psychology program at the University of Toronto: Mississauga.

Tasks

Content creation;
Email marketing;
New social platforms

Tools

Canva
Mailchimp
Discord

Content creation

Check out some of the visuals that I created during my time as social media coordinator for PAUSE below.

If you want to see examples of posts (including captions) you can check out this document (please note that while I wrote the captions in this document, not all of the visuals in it were made by me).

Email marketing

During my time with PAUSE, I took on the initiative of creating PAUSE's first ever emailed monthly newsletters. We were able to generate a subscriber base of over 110 students within just a few months! Topics of the newsletters consisted of upcoming events, PAUSE's updates, and fun facts/research findings.

You can find links to the email campaigns that I sent out below:

August 2020: Research Symposium

September 2020: PAUSE Welcome Week / First PAUSE Newsletter

October 2020: October Newsletter

November 2020: November Newsletter / Discord Server

December 2020: Happy Holidays

January 2021: Two Upcoming Events / January Newsletter

February 2021: ROP Night

March 2021: Sustainability Week / 2021-22 Elections

New social platforms

Due to the pandemic, many students struggled to find ways to connect with other students and make friends, something that would normally be a large part of the university experience if they were attending classes in person. I saw this as an opportunity to expand PAUSE's presence and created a Discord server not only for psychology students but also for any other student at UTM.

With Discord also being a very popular and emerging platform among students at the time, coupled with the need to make friends, the launch was very successful. The nature of the platform also allowed for extensive discussion and paved the way for many meaningful connections and friendships.

Scroll down to get a tour of the server and its benefits!

(usernames and profile pictures have been hidden for privacy)

Channel Organization

The PAUSE Discord server was organized into various topics in order to make it easier for students to engage in specific conversations and discussions that are of interest to them.


Voice Channels

We created different voice channels: one for one-on-one virtual office hours if a student wanted to meet with one of our executive members for any concerns, and another "room" for casual conversation between students.

Voice channels

Rules

Setting some basic rules easily answered some questions that some people may have, and also allowed the conversations between students to remain respectful and genuine (the server was also regularly monitored).

Discord channel rules

Academic Conversations

There were many conversations where students were able to help each other with problems from courses they were enrolled in or just general academic struggles.

Academic conversations

Non-Academic Conversations

The server was not just for psychology-related talk... students often made connections based on common interests and hobbies, such as a podcast in this example.

Non-academic conversations

Memes

We wanted to keep the server light-hearted and upbeat, so we encouraged everyone to send memes that others would find funny and relatable!

Memes

The future is all digital, so hopefully this case study encourages other organizations and company to look into creating Discord servers to facilitate authentic and personal connections between their audience members!