Across the sector there is an ongoing need for mass communication, whether across buildings, entire campus' or proactive communication with parents of pupils and students. There is an increasing obligation, particularly for schools, to implement effective systems in order to deliver instant alarms or alerts in the event that students and staff need to be contacted/communicated with quickly.
SMS is increasingly coming to the fore as a cost-effective mass communication tool and is already being used effectively by some forward thinking institutions, such as the University of Central England in Birmingham (UCE Birmingham).
UCE Birmingham deployed a Short Message Service (SMS) to enable more efficient and secure communications between faculty and students. Critical information relating to courses and lectures is sent via SMS to participating students at the Birmingham-based University. Allowing the university to provide instant updates on lecture schedules by alerting students to changes or cancellations, the service has resulted in improved attendance at lectures and educational standards.
This type of SMS service can be scaled to add any number of faculties as required, without incurring any additional cost - a huge benefit for the cash-conscious education sector. UCE Birmingham is able to incorporate text message solutions for additional facilities, for example, the library could communicate with students to remind when a book is approaching its due date, increasing efficiency and saving the students money at the same time!
Unlike traditional SMS solutions designed for distributing large numbers of text messages, some service providers offer education sector customers the option to pay after the messages have been sent. Organisations have traditionally had to pre-purchase blocks of thousands of text messages prior to use, however, this post-pay approach allows customers to issue messages ‘as and when' required without having to check the credit balance each time. This billing model is particularly appropriate for the education sector as it allows users to be flexible and provides the peace of mind that the institution will always have the resources needed to keep students, teachers and parents informed, whether it is a change to their schedules or a more urgent notification.
Some service providers offer a web interface, giving the user the option to type any messages to allow for faster composition and greater accuracy than is possible with a mobile phone. In addition, the web interface can be secured by password protection to assure that any mobile numbers stored on the database can only be accessed by authorised members of the faculty, thereby removing any security concerns. This type of solution also includes integrated reporting institutions to confirm that all messages have reached their intended audience.
Through the use of products and services more commonly used in the corporate world such as SMS, HE and FE institutions can communicate with their students and potential applicants in a way that is immediately familiar to them. With the next generation becoming increasingly tech-savvy, communicating with them via these methods promises to deliver significant rewards, both for the sector and students alike.
