Nearpeer for College

Transitioning from a community college to a full university is super scary but I feel like I have a better grasp of the social aspect because of near peer. I was able to connect with people with shared interests or groups with me which was super nice! I really appreciate how it has a separate group chat with transfer students a lot of the time it feels like there isn’t a lot of social spaces or opportunities for transfer students but its nice to have one here. I think near peer can benefit by adding more specific group chats per major. So a college of education chat or a college of business chat so that people can connect with others that share similar majors or career paths! Overall I think near peer is going to help me socially transition to my university!

The app revolves around setting different interests on your profile, and then the app matches you to people with similar interests. This part is amazing, and really great at linking you with other individuals. The main issue, however, is the software of the app: -Opening the app and loading the Home Screen can take about 10 seconds or so, which makes checking messages somewhat frustrating -Opening the app after previously having it open occasionally causes it to not load at all, getting stuck on a white screen -Notifications can be a nightmare, as they can endlessly pop up on a busy groupchat, yet it’s incredibly slow to open the app and check messages I’d say if the app can be optimized in any way, this would significantly improve the user experience. Again, it’s a great concept, just needs improvement to avoid users resorting to Discord or Instagram to resume contact.

The idea of Nearpeer is brilliant - often students at colleges will turn to outside apps such as Discord or GroupMe in order to form chat groups to meet people from their clubs, their classes, and so on. However, the actual execution is not so great. The app could be greatly improved by some bug fixes - for example, if I open it by tapping on a push notification the app opens as a blank screen and never loads to show what the push notification said (doesn’t open to the new chat in a group, does not open the the peer who followed me as a notification said, etc.). It would also be smart to have the feature where students themselves could make groups for tutoring/classes and add their peers to the discussion without having to contact an administrator. The option to have polls within groups, to have a calendar with group-specific events, and for facilitators to upload pictures in the chat would be improvements as well. These would help improve the functionality of the app and provide more of an incentive for students to join.