If you are anything like me, you enjoy poring over the weekly Wednesday installments of “This Weekend at Conn” emails from the Office of Student Engagement. However, as I approach the end of the email, I start to lose some steam, and I find myself skimming the remainder of the message. For this reason, I never put forth much time or energy into figuring out what Corq was, being an application advertised only at the end of the Student Engagement emails. I decided to investigate the features of this program to see if it could serve as an asset to both myself and the greater school community. Upon further research, I discovered that Corq could be a great way to supplement your campus resources.
What is Corq?
Corq is a mobile app available on the App Store and Google Play. The app is advertised as a resource to find events in and around college campuses across North America. The app allows students to sort events by proximity to campus, themes (i.e., arts, sports, service, etc.), types of events, and perks. In short, the program provides a list of events happening in and around Connecticut College. From the app, you can easily find the time, location, and description of activities. The app also works in conjunction with other mobile platforms and allows you to share events with others, add events directly to your calendar, and submit RSVPs. RSVPing to an event will add your events of interest to a tab with the headline “My” to easily keep track of the events you have or plan to attend.
Corq vs. ConnQuest
What sets this app apart from all the other scheduling platforms the school offers? Until recently, CamelWeb and ConnQuest have been the place to find out about happenings on-campus. Upon doing some further digging, I determined several distinct similarities and differences between these two resources:
Essentially, the services of the platforms are the same. Reasonably so, as both ConnQuest and Corq are affiliates of the Campus Labs organization, now known under the name Anthology. Both platforms expose students to a list of events happening on campus. You can easily access the time, location, and description of activities and engagement opportunities, and you can refine events based on themes, perks, and types of events.
ConnQuest offers the viewer a more enjoyable visual experience, while Corq is a more concise platform, offering a single stream of events. I find ConnQuest more “inspiring” to the reader, while Corq offers a rather utilitarian design. ConnQuest offers pictures about each event, which provides a more personal and engaging web experience. Corq lacks the custom imaging feature that ConnQuest has and instead uses a symbolic icon to the left of each event and a description of the activity.
Another main difference is the amount of time you need to spend on each platform to gain desired information. If you want to find an event for two months from today, Corq lets you easily and quickly find one, while ConnQuest requires you to click through pages of events, slowing down the accessibility process. In short, Corq offers a faster and more efficient organization method that allows you to spend less time searching and more time getting involved.
In addition to the differing organizational methods, Corq offers a more straightforward viewing experience on mobile devices than ConnQuest. Since ConnQuest is designed as an optimized for a web browser, some features lose their organization when using a phone to access the platform. Since Corq is designed to be an app for mobile devices, it makes finding events on-the-go far easier than doing that on ConnQuest.
However, what you save in time, you make up for with a lack of information. ConnQuest allows you to gain even more details about events and organizations than does Corq. ConnQuest offers students the opportunity to “enroll” into a club, which provides access to view group members, leadership positions and log your engagement within the club.
Should I Get Corq?
Is Corq worth adding another app to your phone? Ultimately, this decision depends on personal preference. If receiving the weekly student engagement emails has offered enough information, and you do not find yourself frequenting to ConnQuest, then Corq may not be the app for you. However, if you constantly find yourself on ConnQuest, looking for activities throughout the week, Corq could be a supplement, as the app allows you to always have an interactive schedule without needing to visit a webpage every time you want to see what is going on at Conn.
Personally, I do not see myself using the app as a replacement for the vast number of resources that ConnQuest offers. In full transparency, I do not think I opened the app again since writing this article. Although it has not been the most beneficial app for me or my lifestyle, Corq can be a great resource if you know what you are looking to do and want to confirm specific details, such as a meeting’s date or time. Regardless, I encourage you to try the app for yourself and see what works for you–you never know what you may have been missing.
