What bonds student affairs professionals more than a discussion around opportunities and obstacles to getting the word out to our students about an event or a deadline? These days, it is unusual for us to attend meetings where we do not hear about new innovations, the latest ways of using technology and how we can make our lives more efficient in the arena of connecting electronically with our students. Despite the explosion in new technological communication devices and strategies, often, student service professionals continue to be all too familiar with the refrain, “No one told me about that.”
During the ASPH Student Services Council Workshop on November 2 nd 2007, we facilitated a discussion regarding the use of technology to communicate with and amongst students in our respective schools of public health. A topic broad in scope, we consciously focused our session as a conversation on sharing our experiences of best practices in a way that was concrete. One of our goals was to allow participants to leave with a toolbox of ideas that were both small and large in scope, as well as depart with some ideas that could be implemented with limited resources. Throughout three sessions, a virtual laundry list of communication topics was discussed including websites, portals, email, social networks, individual course websites, paper mailings, podcasts, listservs, bulletin boards, and chat rooms to name just a few.
Email systems were a common theme because, in some form or another, we all have our students on an email list. It was clear that many schools are beginning to utilize email digest systems that condense information and use hyperlinks so that users can choose to dig deeper into a topic or scan items quickly. We had a healthy discussion of the benefits of using categorized listservs, (e.g., the ability to send targeted messages to specific populations). We also explored the disadvantages of using large nonspecific listservs. The latter often leaves significant member populations receiving non relevant messages, increasing the likelihood that they discard many, if not all of the messages sent to the list, without reading them.
Issues related to social networking were a hot topic, somewhat polarizing the groups between those who saw the benefit of using networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook for college recruitment purposes and others who viewed them as distractions to their own schools' websites and, as well as invitations for privacy violations. The larger MySpace network was established first and made available to subscribers across the web. Its rival, Facebook, came along in early 2004 as a networking service for college students. Facebook has since grown to include anyone with a valid email address, with over 64 million users worldwide, catching up and keeping pace with MySpace. With their ability to reach out broadly to a youthful population, some schools are using Facebook and/or MySpace platforms to advertise themselves. Both networks allow you to easily upload video, share photos, establish blogs and forums, and promote events, making them an ideal infrastructure for communicating with potential and current students, as well as with alumni groups. While Facebook counts a larger number of older professionals within its ranks, ASPH Student Services workshop participants raised some concerns about the ability of these networks to reach and serve the specific demographics represented within their diverse student populations. A greater universal apprehension concerned the crises of conscience that can occur when student services professionals, walking the virtual halls of the social network, observe honor and conduct violations of their students. What's an administrator to do? Report? Not report? Those who are looking at crafting policy are considering the common avenue of “not actively policing” the internet though simultaneously warning students that they will pursue community standard violations if information comes to their attention. Additionally, it becomes incumbent upon career services professionals within our schools to remind students that potential employers are checking students out via social networking sites prior to offering employment.
Even with these concerns, participants could see the benefits to using social networks in a limited fashion, such as to establish an applicant site, an alumni community or to host their career services offices. In the debate regarding schools' use of Facebook or MySpace to communicate with students, there is discomfort with abandoning schools' official websites as tools to communicate with applicants, students and alumni in favor of social networks. While school loyalty plays a part in those opinions, so does limited or shrinking resources for student affairs offices.
Session discussions revealed that a wide range of resource levels, both human and technological, exists within ASPH schools. A mode of communication that works well at one school isn't necessarily feasible or warranted at another. While it would be advantageous for all schools to have a healthy amount of funding earmarked for technology, effective communication can and does occur on a limited budget. A number of communication strategies emerged from our conversations, and we have categorized them from low to high resource needs:
Low resources:
- Be clear about communication policies. Insure that your students, faculty and staff have a basic understanding of how your school is communicating with students. Widely share what populations are on your listserv(s) and what guides content, when messages go out and with what frequency.
- Move away from individual announcements being sent out to one where a digest goes out once or more per week.
- Clean up your listservs. Separate out populations from each other and consider establishing listservs based on sub-populations and topical areas.
- Consider providing to your students (through student government) their own listserv of all students. This allows for informal communication to go out to students, from students, and gets the administration out of the awkward position of potentially censoring content. It also serves to create community in ways that information sent from you cannot possibly achieve. Engage student leaders in developing and instituting some basic guidelines for student use (your university policies on decency, email etiquette, political campaigning and sales are all important to consider but are not an exhaustive list).
Medium resources:
- Consider a digest email system that condenses information through hyperlinks and archives messages to allow for searching capability.
- Launch online bulletin boards for incoming students.
- Connect with and launch a Facebook or MySpace page.
- Allow for student group and individual student web pages.
- Create websites that are intuitive. Consider terms and ways of framing content that conforms to current industry standards. Students (and other audiences) care little about the organizational divides within your school; they want to see seamless links and information structured from their perspective.
Higher resources:
- Launch a student portal where students can manipulate content and have all their most important administrative and student electronic tools on one page.
- Collapse all calendar systems into one. Allow students to connect.
- Link calendar databases to your student email system so that items like “today's events” are automatically sent out.
- Work with your IT department to create an online form that has event planners and other authors of content input their own messages into your email digest system. Such a system can be set up to then allow you to approve messages to be sent in a digest format.
- Develop, script and produce podcasts for specific student populations, applicants and admitted students.
Throughout each of the workshops, there was a well-shared belief that effective student communication will always be a high priority and that technology stops for no student services professional. The demographics of our student populations will continue to change as will the modes available to reach them. There was a clear theme that too many communication strategy choices left some colleagues overwhelmed. Suggestions of implementing too many tools left others feeling like they could not even get started. However, participants did agree that there is middle ground to be taken. Making several thoughtful communication strategy choices, coupling them with a reasonable amount of their own time– and in some cases, the support of their IT teams, helped to improve communication, fostered student community and freed them to focus on other responsibilities.
Chris Tisch, University of Arizona, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and Jim Glover, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. |
