 |
|
|
| 
|
The Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal Reaching the Masses: E-Newsletters and Facebook in Advising Bryan J. Ray, University of Oklahoma Look across our college campuses today and you will find students online, hooked up, and plugged in. They are carrying laptops, iPods, Palm Pilots, and many other other devices. These students have grown up in the most technologically advanced society the world has ever known, and the benefits of this are obvious. We can listen to any song or watch any movie with just the click of a button. We can call our friends and families across the country for the same price as calling our next-door neighbor. Most college campuses try to take advantage of this technology and use it to communicate with students. In this article, we will discuss the development of our mass e-mail system and use of the popular online networking site, Facebook, to communicate with students. The University of Oklahoma (OU) has a mass e-mail system in place that is very user friendly and allows any department on campus to send to its respective group of students after following appropriate permission protocols. University College, which houses all first-year students and pre-health major students, tries to send a mass e-mail to all of its students once a month. We gave the e-mail a fancy title, the UC News Flash, thinking students would catch on and add it as a “favorite” on their computers. We listed important academic items, such as when to add and drop classes, how to withdraw from the university, how to apply to honor societies, where to find tutoring, etc. Our hope was that students might stop calling us for answers that they could find themselves. They needed to do one thing only—check their e-mail. Later, after asking most of our students during advising sessions about the UC News Flash, we learned most of them had never heard of it. Though we were sending it to more than 4,000 students each month, it seemed no one was opening and reading it. This was disheartening, considering the time and energy we had invested in promoting and advertising it. We clearly had to figure out new ways to communicate with students. The existing UC News Flash seemed unable to present the personality that we thought students would like. The mass e-mail at OU was fairly standard and allowed everyone to use it; however, we could not add images, different fonts, or even links to important things. It was originally developed this way so that everyone could open a document from basically any type of computer. Using Adobe GoLive, a Web-design software program, we built a colorful, e-newsletter full of graphics, links, fonts, and many other eye-catching elements. We posted this on the University College Web site each month and directed students and their parents to it if they had basic questions. We felt as though we had surpassed a technological obstacle and were finally cutting edge. However, how could we effectively send this newly packaged UC News Flash? We could not transmit it through our mass e-mail system, because it did not conform to the proper font, size, and no-images rules. Our information technology department provided a digital list of all of our students' e-mail addresses from which we created a mass list using Microsoft Access. We then copied the newsletter from the Web site, pasted it into Microsoft Outlook, and sent it to the list. We believed students would finally stop calling with questions about adding and dropping classes or finding the writing center on campus. We expected that they would look at us as their technological equals and realize that we could play their game. A few problems arose. While we did have a list of e-mail addresses, it was not always accurate. Students left our college for their degree-granting colleges, yet they still received our e-mails. New students transferred into the university, but we did not want to manually add each one to this list, as it would take a substantial amount of time. Feedback we received from students repeated what they had said in the past: “We have no idea what the UC News Flash is,” or they explained that they “. . . thought it was just another piece of junk mail.” Though our newsletter looked cutting edge and hip, either students were ignoring it or not all recipients were our current students. Again we consulted the IT department. We requested a mass e-mail system through which we could send our elaborate newsletter, but we also wanted to send it to a continuously updated list of recipients. We wanted efficiency and accuracy. After much collaboration, we were able to create an e-mail address that went out to all of our students. The list was completely accurate, because it was coded with our own students' data. In other words, if our admissions office coded a student as being in our college, he or she received the e-mail. It did not matter if students changed their majors, transferred schools, or returned to University College. Those who received the e-mail would be students we intended to receive it. The jury was still out as to whether or not students would actually read the newsletter. Sure they would receive it, but would they open it? We publicized the e-newsletter to advise students it was legitimate correspondence and not junk mail. We next wanted to know if students were actually reading it. Last fall, we convened our student advisory board meeting. This group is composed of one student from each of our Gateway to College Learning courses (which are designed to help students transition from high school to college) and totals thirty-five students plus the deans and directors of University College. The purpose of the fall meeting was to solicit feedback from students about their first-year experiences. Students were asked about their experiences with residence halls, professors, and the UC News Flash. Most students still had no idea what the e-newsletter was or when it was sent. The few who did read it each month often complained that their e-mail providers distorted the format of the newsletter. Often the images were in odd places or the fonts were different, and some students still reported that they were not receiving the e-mail at all. This was extremely unfortunate. We thought we had come up with a successful plan that far surpassed our old way of doing things. We thought students would fall in love with this form of communication, but all of these assumptions were incorrect. In all of our Gateway to College Learning courses, students complete a section that highlights time management. Classes focus on the amount of time students engage in different activities, such as eating, bathing, studying, attending class, exercising, etc. Most students report that there is no time for additional studying. When asked to be more specific, students indicate that they are on Facebook much of that time. Facebook (http://www.facebook.com), of course, is an online networking community that is extremely popular on college campuses across the United States. Anyone can join a certain network in Facebook and ask people within it to be digital “friends.” Internet information provider comScore (2007) reports that Facebook.com is the sixth most trafficked site on the Internet. It currently claims more than 31 million users, representing more than 47,000 different networks. More than half of Facebook's registered users return daily, according to comScore, and spend an average of twenty minutes on the site each day. Facebook.com also boasts that it is the number-one photo-sharing site on the Web, with more than 6 million photos updated daily. Arrington (2005) reports that 85 percent of college students use Facebook and 60 percent of those students log in every day. There is no doubt that Facebook has become a significant part of the college experience. The dean of our college requested that we consider using Facebook as a means of communicating with our students. We met with our IT department to learn about Facebook utilities and features. It did appear that it was a very effective way to communicate with students, since they spend much of their time there and can receive messages through it. Many articles suggest that e-mail is not very popular among the current generation of college student and that they view e-mail primarily as a way of communicating with adults. Students clearly prefer text and instant messaging when talking to friends. According to Olsen (2007), students personally prefer social networking (Facebook, MySpace, etc.), instant messaging, and text messaging over e-mail. Consequently, we began to look into Facebook. Although we were open to the idea of incorporating Facebook, we still had to sit down and plan how to do this most effectively. Should this replace sending mass e-mails completely? How would we communicate with everyone within Facebook? How would they even know we were online? We established a group called “University College” within the University of Oklahoma network. This was tricky, because we could not make students join the group, and some students, although there were few, were not registered on Facebook. We slowly invited people to join from our college and hoped it would catch on. Within our first day on Facebook, with absolutely no publicity at all, we welcomed thirty-seven members to our group. The next day, we advised our students via e-mail that the new Facebook group existed. We mentioned that Facebook would not be our only means of communicating, as we would continue to send the newsletter by e-mail each month in case students preferred not to register on Facebook. Students responded overwhelmingly. Our e-mail announcement was sent on a Friday afternoon and by Monday morning, we had more than 500 students in the group. Some assumed that Facebook was a student domain and were not pleased that adult staff members were using it. Most students, however, were ecstatic that we were trying to communicate this way. They reported that they frequently check messages on Facebook but may not check their e-mail for several days. Within the group, we have a link to our newsletter, which includes hyperlinks to sites about academic events, deadlines, awards, etc. We can send instant messages to students on Facebook and it is a quick, informal way to communicate with everyone in the group. For example, if it is the last day to drop a course and receive a full refund, then everyone in the group will know about it that day. Currently, we have approximately 775 students in our group. Several student participants reported that this was the best idea we have come up with to date. We have received more applications for the National Honor Society and other first-year awards, because more students heard about it. We are also giving students a chance to locate answers for themselves via the Internet, e-mail, and Facebook. Currently, we have about 20 percent of the first-year class in our Facebook group. We expect this number to grow significantly after promoting the group during our summer enrollment program. Although the Facebook idea has been quite successful, it also has met some opposition. Our student newspaper published an article about University College's official presence on Facebook and expressed a negative opinion about staff invasion of territory it believed belongs to students. The fact remains, however, that we adapted to the changing world of technology in an effort to improve our communication with students. Only time will tell if this means will be more effective than e-mail. References Arrington, M. (2005, September 7). 85% of college students use Facebook.
Techcrunch.com. Retrieved July 24, 2007, from http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/09/07/85-of-college-students-use-facebook/ comScore. (2007, April 10). comScore releases worldwide rankings of top Web properties. Retrieved July 24,
2007, from http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1370 Olsen, S. (2007, July 18). Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead. News.com. Retrieved July 24, 2007, from http://news.com.com/Kids+say+e-mail+is%2C+like%2C+soooo+dead/2009-1032_3-6197242.html?tag=item About the AuthorBryan J. Ray is an academic counselor at University College, University of Oklahoma. He can be reached at bray@ou.edu. Published in The Mentor on August 30, 2007, by Penn State's Division of Undergraduate Studies Available online at www.psu.edu/dus/mentor/ Privacy and Legal Statements | Copyright | © The Pennsylvania State University | All rights reserved | |