Northern Illinois University Partners with InScribe Education to Advance Engagement and Belonging for a Growing Online Population

Partnership helps NIU's online learning team build community across a multi-site region, aligned with the university's student success priorities

InScribe, a digital community platform built to help colleges and universities create community around online learning, today announced a partnership with Northern Illinois University (NIU) to launch a dedicated engagement platform for its growing population of online students.

Since 2023, when NIU's Office of Online Learning brought online student support in-house, the university has grown its fully online enrollment by roughly 7% every year. That growth has been supported by a team of seven people running prospective student support, orientation, newsletters, student advisory committees, retention campaigns, proactive outreach, webinars and one-on-one coaching to help keep students enrolled.

One of six pillars in NIU's student success framework is engagement and belonging alongside academics, inclusive excellence, care and support, financial literacy, and career development. The university's 2026 goals go further, calling for the exploration of "apps that help to connect students and build community" as part of a broader commitment to student experience. InScribe's launch answers that goal directly.

"Our goals for this year include finding apps and ways to help students connect and build community," said Anna Richardson, Director of Online and Adult Learning at NIU. "InScribe is a tool that can help us achieve this, and this partnership illustrates how NIU ties community and belonging to retention. We look forward to increased engagement and success for our students."

InScribe is designed specifically for higher education to help students feel more connected and supported throughout their academic journey by creating a centralized space where students can ask questions, share knowledge and connect with peers, mentors and university staff.

Starting fall 2026, up to 2,000 NIU online students will have access to Inscribe, integrated directly into Blackboard. The platform is designed to meet students where they already are, rather than asking them to adopt one more tool or requiring staff to manage additional channels.

"NIU wrote engagement and belonging into their student success framework as a named priority, not an afterthought," said Katy Kappler, CEO of InScribe. "That's rare. It tells you they already know what we know: this isn't a nice-to-have, it's one of the few retention levers a university can actually control."

NIU's decision to bring online recruitment and support in-house in 2023 reflects a broader pattern among regional public universities that have moved away from third-party OPMs, choosing to own the student experience directly rather than outsourcing it. InScribe extends that same philosophy to community: rather than leaving engagement to an ad hoc tool like a Facebook group, NIU is treating it as core infrastructure, owned and integrated into the systems its team already uses every day.

For NIU, the partnership continues the university's dedicated efforts to building the infrastructure students need to succeed, wherever they're learning from.

About Northern Illinois University
Northern Illinois University is a student-centered, nationally recognized public research university, with expertise that benefits its region and spans the globe in a wide variety of fields, including the sciences, humanities, arts, business, engineering, education, health and law. The Wall Street Journal and CollegeNET recognize NIU as a leading institution for social mobility, or helping its students climb the socioeconomic ladder. Through its main campus in DeKalb, Illinois, and education centers for students and working professionals in Chicago, Naperville and Rockford, NIU offers more than 100 areas of study while serving a diverse and international student body.

About InScribe
InScribe is a digital student support platform that leverages the power of community and artificial intelligence to connect students with the answers, resources, and individuals they need to succeed. InScribe's digital communities cut across the traditional support silos in higher education, giving students a single place to turn when they need help—no matter the topic or time of day. Students benefit from on-demand, peer-to-peer, and student-to-expert collaboration which helps them feel more connected, increasing student engagement, satisfaction, and retention. Learn more about InScribe at https://www.inscribeapp.com/.

SOURCE InScribe