SLATE / APPLICANT COMMUNITY
Community, Opportunity & Voice Engine
An institution-branded community built within Slate. Discover shared interests, join conversations, keep useful resources, and find experiences worth exploring.
Explore the applicant journeyDesigned and built by David Dysart.
A COLLEGE SEARCH / A HUMAN CONNECTION
Applicants bring more than an application. They bring interests, uncertainties, and questions about the people and experiences ahead. A community gives that curiosity somewhere to go while they consider their next step.
COVE connects exploration with conversation: a shared interest leads to a circle, an event leads to a discussion, and a helpful answer stays within reach for the next visit.
ARRIVE / CONNECT / EXPLORE / RETURN
A personalized home connects academic interests and everyday curiosity with places to explore. Applicants choose what to share in their profile and which interest circles to join.
Relevant discussions offer an opening: ask a question, reply in context, or follow along. Welcome Crew and credited Student Voices give the community people and perspectives to meet.
Save a Field Guide answer, shape a Visit Plan, or try an optional activity. Private Passport progress and Quests help applicants keep track of their own exploration.
A personal dashboard brings followed conversations, unread activity, and saved resources together. Read markers help applicants see where to continue when they come back.
THE EXPERIENCE / IN CONTEXT
An interest, a useful conversation, and a saved answer can each become a reason to continue exploring.
HARBOR COLLEGE / APPLICANT COMMUNITY
FIND YOUR PEOPLE
A CONVERSATION TO EXPLORE
I’d like to find somewhere to make things. Can you join a project even if you’re still exploring majors?
WELCOME CREW / FICTIONAL RESPONSE
That’s a useful question to bring to a visit. What would you most like to try building?
Applicant conversations and institution discussions support contextual replies, follows, and Thanks. Unanswered filters and pagination make exchanges easier to find; applicants can edit or withdraw their own contributions.
Interest circles connect shared interests with relevant discussions. Welcome Crew, credited Student Voices, and event conversations add human context. Optional per-event Who’s Going sharing lets applicants choose whether to show a profile around a particular event.
Saved Field Guide answers and private Passport progress carry useful context into the next visit. Quests, polls, a Major Personality questionnaire, four game-form links, Visit Plan, and a Mini-Lab pilot provide optional ways to explore. Participation follows curiosity rather than competitive rewards.
COVE is a consulting and implementation offering shaped around an institution’s identity, audience, and student experience. Community structure, content, and presentation are configured within Slate, alongside the institution’s existing applicant journey.
THE DEVELOPMENT DEMONSTRATION
A look inside the Stevens development demonstration of COVE—from relevant conversations to private progress and useful answers. Community examples are fictional and clearly labeled.
Select a screenshot to enlarge it. Press Escape to close the enlarged view.
A conversation that starts with a shared interest.
Open original imageA human welcome, in the context of a conversation. Fictional demo responses shown.
Open original imageSmall steps, private progress, and more to explore.
Open original imageUseful answers worth keeping for the next visit.
Open original imageSTAFF / KEEP THE COMMUNITY USEFUL
Native staff content forms support updates to community features and prompts. Review and moderation controls, together with Community Desk, give staff a place to maintain content and attend to participation.
THE IMPLEMENTATION
Native Slate Forms, fields, datasets, entities, and Configurable Joins-based queries drive the experience. Shared, commented HTML, CSS, and JavaScript handle presentation. Authored SQL remains in query parts and formulas.
The Pond is the installed development demonstration at Stevens for current undergraduate applicants, including students who have not yet been admitted. COVE is the reusable DysArtisan offering; each institution can give its community a student-facing name of its own.
The demonstration is not a completed production rollout. Broader audiences can be scoped for future implementations.
PUT IT TO WORK
Shape an applicant community around your institution’s people, opportunities, and voice.