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Putting Student Communication in Con-TEXT
2/15/2007
"In the last week we have sent out five text messages to everyone in Lebanon who is registered with a Swedish mobile network," [ Nina Ersman] told The Local. Telia's Jan Sjöberg explained that its mobile subscribers who were in Lebanon were sent an SMS as early as last Friday, which told them that an evacuation would be taking place. Since then, further messages have told people to get to a certain hotel at a certain time, depending upon their priority status.
(Source: Outside the Beltway)
"Wow" was what I thought at the time. The "wow" factor is gone, but the value of text messaging grows. Who would you expect to be among the first adopters of this communications method? How about football coaches?
One of the best descriptions, from the student perspective, I have found of the value of a service like this comes from the student body president at Middle Tennessee State University: He recently traveled with a couple of university administrators to examine how a functioning system already in place works at Montclair State University (NJ).
The simplest way to explain this is: The university will send you a text message when you need know important information. At first, it sounds pretty intrusive, but it is all an optional service.
With this program, students are able to stay connected by being members of groups. Each class you are in is a specific group, and each club or organization you are in can also be a group. If a class is canceled or a meeting is changed, a text message can be sent from the teacher or the class or president of the club to the members of that group or class notifying them immediately. How many times have you walked to a class just to find out the professor canceled it? With the cellular communication, you can get text message before you leave from home. Instead of driving to school and walking all the way to the classroom door to read a posted note, you will read a text message as soon as the teacher cancels.
Like many of you, I receive a wide variety of e-mail alerts about various things, the most time-sensitive of which is weather alerts from the Emergency e-mail Network. (In the context of researching this column, I learned that it now has extended its offerings into text, so, sigh, there is one more decision to make about how I want to receive those kinds of communications.) The Chronicle wrote about this last fall: E-Mail Is for Old People.
I really don't know the answer to capturing the attention of young people for the important messages we want them to see. But it is clear that e-mail is no longer "the solution" we can rely on to cover our bases. Also coming into focus may be the awareness that this is a moving target that is going to require our institutions to shift gears on a cycle that matches our student-customers' adoption of new technologies. We look forward to an "interesting" future.
Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP).
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