Are your students missing assignments and updates? Perhaps it isn’t your messages, but the way you’re communicating. With college-aged students favoring SMS (text) messaging and social media, universities should take notice.
Many professors use email to communicate with their students — but evidence suggests students do not check their email very often, if at all. Students spent just six minutes a day on email, according to a recent story in The New York Times that cited an experiment done earlier this year by Reynol Junco, an associate professor of library science at Purdue. In contrast, those students spent 31 minutes on social networking sites.
Pew Research also shows young adults favor texting, with 95% of adults 18 to 29 saying they use the text messaging feature regularly on their phones. These users send and receive an average of 87.7 texts per day.
Schools have begun to embrace SMS systems. Many universities and colleges now offer emergency safety alerts by SMS. Students — and even their parents — can subscribe. The alerts are delivered and show up immediately, removing the barrier of having to sign in to email or open an app for viewing.
SMS and social media can be extremely helpful to reach classes and student organizations. At the University of Pittsburgh, the Pitt Text Message Update service offers multiple ways to reach students. Faculty and staff members can create groups and disseminate info by SMS and email to those lists. The list can automatically post to Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.
Some other ways SMS and social media alerts could be used:
- Notify students of exam times and locations; updates on assignments and readings.
- Remind students to make appointments and attend events.
- Provide links where students can access their grades and comments.
Systems like this increase the chances that students will receive — and react — to messages from faculty and staff.