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PCPA > Newsletter
Using
Information Technology to Communicate With Students:
Opportunity and Challenge
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Using Information
Technology to Communicate With Students:
Opportunity and Challenge
As a student affairs practitioner, I have observed with interest how the impact of information and communications technology has transformed so many work processes within our profession. In less than one decade, the World Wide Web has fundamentally changed how most colleges and universities deliver their most basic student services. At Penn State University Park, for example, a once overcrowded service lobby in the building housing the bursar and registrar's offices is now generally empty as students register and pay bills using a Web-based interface. Likewise, how we communicate with students has also been transformed by the use of information technology. College and university Web sites have now become irreplaceable as sources of information for prospective and currently enrolled students. Electronic mail and messaging is increasingly favored as an efficient means to communicate with individual students and groups of students. Casual observation reveals the large percentage of students who routinely walk around on our campuses talking on cellular phones and referencing personal digital assistants (PDA's) for information.
Research
on Student Technology Use at Penn State
In October 2001, my colleague, Dr. Betty Moore, conducted a study on student
technology usage and found that students are spending significant time
each week engaged in computer-based communications. Instant messaging
software is now most favored for communicating socially while email is
used primarily to communicate with faculty (see Chart 1).
Online computing activity Average hours per week
Instant Messaging 11.06
Class work 6.35
Surfing the Web 6.16
Email 4.91
Communicating with faculty 1.03
Chat rooms 0.3
Chart
1. Student Online Technology Usage
Penn State Pulse Survey, Web Services, October 2001.
This same study also provided useful insights into a rising trend of student technology usage that will impact student affairs practitioners even more in the future. Not surprisingly, younger students reported statistically higher levels in the number of hours they were engaged in the use of instant messaging and Web surfing than older students (see Chart 2).
Technology Activity
Hours/week
for 1st year students
Instant Messaging: 16.97
Surfing the Web: 7.00
Hours/week
for 2nd year students
Instant Messaging: 12.83
Surfing the Web: 7.16
Hours/week
for 3rd year students
Instant Messaging: 9.46
Surfing the Web: 5.59
Hours/week
for 4th year students
Instant Messaging: 5.64
Surfing the Web: 5.19
Chart 2.
Statistical Differences by Class Year
Penn State Pulse Survey, Web Services, October 2001.
These findings,
however, should lead to the false conclusion that older students are failing
to heavily engage in the use of Web-based technologies. A spring 2003
study of adult learner applications found that older, non-traditional
age students now use the Web to investigate university programs and services
more than any other method (see Chart 3).
Method of Investigation Used "Before" or "Both Before
and After" Admission
Number of Adult Learners
Web site: 159
Telephone inquiry: 133
E-mail inquiry: 60
Campus Tour: 66
Attended Info Session, Open House, Fair: 34
Met with a staff member: 106
Other: 12
Percentage
of Adult Learners
Web site: 28%
Telephone inquiry: 23%
E-mail inquiry: 11%
Campus Tour: 12%
Attended Info Session, Open House, Fair: 6%
Met with a staff member: 19%
Other: 2%
Chart 3. Method Adult Learners Used to Investigate Penn State University. Penn State Center for Adult Learners, Adult Applicant Study, May 2003.
Like many colleges and universities, Penn State has used email to replace hard-copy mailings of many information memos and policy documents sent each year to students. Each student is provided a University email account and is expected to check the email inbox regularly to stay in touch with faculty and administrative offices. In addition to individualized electronic communication, surprising growth has occurred with mass electronic communications as well. Penn State has created a daily electronic 'newswire' for students and families that each day is received by more than 151,000 people. News and information sent electronically yields significant cost savings and it has the advantage of being always timely and fresh.
Technology
in Student Affairs
Within Student Affairs at Penn State similar changes wrought by electronic
communications have occurred. Code of conduct and student organization
policies that were printed and distributed each year at great expense
are now available to students on the Student Affairs Web site. It has
also been recognized that thousands of prospective and current students
are using the Student Affairs Web site to get information and to access
some basic services.
In 2001, I chaired a Student Affairs team at Penn State that was charged
with reviewing the Division's Web pages and recommending changes that
would make the pages more readable, more accessible and useful. The team
quickly concluded that the Web pages were organizationally out of date.
Like most 'first generation' Web pages, the Student Affairs Web homepage
was organized the same way our departments were organized - in an administrative
hierarchy. The Division homepage simply listed the various offices. Over
the years, each office had 'dumped' all hard copy documents and policies
on the Website and created hundreds of pages that required much scrolling
to read. Some departments had unwittingly created more than 1,000 pages
on their Websites. The team wondered: how could any student possibly be
expected to ever read all of that material?
Student
Affairs Website Transformation
Starting in the fall 2001, the Student Affairs Web Team gathered information
by reviewing dozens of other student affairs Websites and analyzing their
strengths and weaknesses based on navigation ease and convenience to students.
Student focus groups were used to measure the effectiveness of benchmarking
sites as well as to reveal the weaknesses of the existing Penn State Student
Affairs Website. The team developed a series of recommendations that have
now been fully implemented on the Student Affairs Website at www.sa.psu.edu.
Penn State
Student Affairs Website Recommendations:
Create a student-friendly
graphic design that is consistent for all unit pages and includes the
tagline, "Making student life better."
Strategically edit
text to accommodate how people actually use the Web by browsing rather
than comprehensive reading. Limit each Web page to a single page view
with links to additional information.
Redesign the homepage
by organizing all links based on the anticipated 'role' of the viewer
(prospective student, current student, parent/family member and faculty/staff).
Create an Intranet
for Student Affairs staff taking advantage of a single log-in to authenticate
each staff user.
Create a standard left-bar
navigation on all pages with 'bread crumb' navigation along the top of
each page to help users move back and forth.
Assure full compliance
with standards which enhance access for blind and visually impaired users.
Use Web traffic reports
to make informed decisions about content, design and links.
Thoughts
About the Future of Using Technology to Communicate With Students
For the past several years, the fastest growing private college in America
has been the University of Phoenix which has aggressively marketed its
attractive opportunities in asynchronous learning. Concerned about this
increased competition for students, other private colleges have moved
into the distance learning marketplace. But traditional public universities
have also dramatically increased their own offerings in distance learning.
The State University of New York (SUNY) Learning Network and Penn State's
World Campus are two well-developed examples. Today, thousands of students
in both of these public systems are taking a mixture of on-campus courses
and distance learning courses. As this trend increases, the mandate for
even more efficient of information technology communications with students
will rise.
For student affairs staff the need for an ever-evolving focus on information technology training will be required to maintain competency. Long past are the days when a student affairs professional could excuse a lack of competence in information technology by claiming it to be a deterrent to the preferred 'face to face' contact with students. Today we need to embrace these emerging forms of communication as a supplement to our 'face to face' contact. We also need to move forward with an understanding of how students prefer to communicate and more readily adopt the use of instant messaging, wireless network communication via PDA's and text messaging over cellular telephones.
We also must understand how students today are communicating with their parents and families in a way that has never before been seen. There is now a real-time narrative that many students are sharing with their parents as they call home several times each day on their cellular phones. Front line staff in student services offices now report that they are often handed a cell phone by a student who asks, "Will you please explain this to my parents?"
Finally, there is the emergence of the new student affairs information technology specialist. There will be an increasing demand for administrators who understand the fundamentals of student development and student affairs as a profession but also know how to create an efficient IT infrastructure along with hiring and supervising effective IT support staff. In student affairs, perhaps our most creative challenge over the next decade will be to explore innovative ways for our staff to use these new technologies not only to communicate with students but to also achieve three of our longstanding, traditional goals: to foster stronger, more vibrant campus communities, to increase student engagement in learning and to diminish student isolation.
Philip J.
Burlingame, Ph.D. is an Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs at
the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, PA.
Direct questions, comments to the webmaster: Mark Bauman