Every year, South African universities are faced with the overwhelming task of allocating students to their rooms and assisting those who are still seeking accommodation. In an effort to help students and make sure that they are comfortable, Tshwane University of Technology Enterprise Holdings (TUTEH), the commercial arm of TUT, has launched TRes (pronounced “tee-res”).
The digital platform aims to simplify student accommodation for students and accommodation providers.
According to Nicholas Motsatse, CEO of TUTEH said TRes is a digital platform built to enhance the quality of life for students in student accommodation while providing appropriate tools and support to accommodation providers.
“The design and functionality of the platform aims to create on-going interaction between students, accommodation providers and university administrators in a spirit of cooperation and mutual respect. Each of the participants must always feel like their voice is heard,” said Motsatse.
One of the main features of Tres, is that students are now able to rate the quality of their accommodation daily, which then translates into the prominent display of those highly rated residences on the landing page of TRes.
“The core idea behind TRes is that student accommodation is not only big business, but it is also more importantly about human dignity. It is about the totality of the experience of being a university student. It is one of the critical contributory factors to student performance,” explained Motsatse.
TUTEH recruited a team of recently graduated technology students who were part of TUT’s Faculty of Information Communication Technology (FoICT) Informatics Community Engagement Programme (ICEP) and gave them the responsibility to lead the development of TRes.Supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS), through a collaboration arrangement, and by Agile 42, a specialist project management firm, the team will continue adding features that further add value to the platform.
