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Case Study

National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences

The South African NIHSS uses Uniflo for doctoral and masters student collaboration and mentorship in all universities throughout South Africa.
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The Problem and the Opportunity

A national exchange of academic mentorship

The National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences overseas academia throughout South Africa, sponsoring masters and doctral candidates and trusted to answer hard questions about the nation.
The COVID-19 Pandemic exposed the institution's inability to fulfil its mandate in a contactless environment with the groups of academics unable to meet. Traditional doctoral schools needed to evolve to a virtual doctoral school. Enter Uniflo.
The NIHSS has candidates for masters and PhD in all tertiary institutions in South Africa
800+

Candidates

Estimated
19

Universities

in 6 Regions
50+

Research Themes

for Mentorship

An annual awards night

A national mandate on academic discourse

Discussions around books and publications

Academic collaboration and mentorship

Academic themed groups and sessions

Press releases and interviews

The NIHSS Virtual Doctoral School builds cohesion with features that bring doctoral candidates together

Groups

Virtual Doctoral Schools
The NIHSS app is structured in groups that match the themes and doctoral schools of the NIHSS. Allowing the virtual doctoral school to mimic the NIHSS' real activity.

Social Activity Stream

Posting and Reacting
Members discuss and interact on group posts taking the topic virtual and fostering discourse. Push notifications keep the group conversation going with every comment.

Calls

Voice and Video Calls
NIHSS members can call each other with audio and video or meet online and have a group discussion. This gives groups the option of meeting online, offline or both.

Messages

Text with File Sharing
Collaborators can text each other and share files in the same conversation as direct calls. This includes drive links for working documents and mutlimedia files.

And more...

Web Portal

Added features for NIHSS staff
The NIHSS Virtual Doctoral School has a control panel for NIHSS staff to manage content, rules, user access and policies. In addition staff are able to view connections diagrams that show the cohesion of the doctoral community. This Uniflo analysis was the subject of a masters thesus.
Visual
Connections Mapping
Analytics
Usage, Traffic and Demographic
Management
Events, Policies and Moderation

Just like the NIHSS you can use Uniflo to increase the cohesion in your membership

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