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Collaboration Brings Students, Schools Closer Together
10/7/2004
One portion of the system, for example, Oracle’s CRM module, has allowed USD to personalize its messages to students. The school can now develop different messages based on an individual student’s needs. Someone interested in engineering, for example, can receive targeted messages focusing on USD’s engineering programs, while someone inquiring about financial aide can be reached with a specific message. “We can talk about that much earlier than we could before,” Pultz says. “We’re using a business model to target the market.”
“We’ve been able to send probably 30 percent more communication to students than before—electronically.” With the previous system, the school didn’t even have a way to capture and store students’ e-mail addresses.
In many ways, USD is ahead of the curve in its creative uses of software for truly collaborating with students. “Other schools are using CRM products for recruiting…” Pultz says. “We’re one of the few schools to implement a CRM system as a principle means of communicating with students.”
Collaboration Pushes Ahead
Despite their variety, true collaboration tools are similar in that they make it seem to users that they’re working together. Sharing thoughts, notes, and documents becomes much easier, including outside the classroom, as Lansing Community College has discovered. Good collaboration products make it possible for schools to manage complex data far more effectively and to share communication with incoming students, as the University of San Diego is doing. And at Cal Poly, the software system will soon allow students to access e-mail and share documents using wireless devices virtually anywhere.
For colleges and universities, those sorts of tools are becoming more efficient, effective and relevant in today’s high-tech world. Changes in how universities are managed, and in the ways that students select a school, are pushing changes in information management. As these examples show, schools that are embrace collaboration technologies will find themselves better able to let students connect inside and outside the classroom. That can help make information sharing seem almost natural—the way it should be.
Linda Briggs is a freelance writer based in San Diego, Calif. She can be reached at lbriggs@lindabriggs.com.
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