Social Media & The Web: 4 Tools I Wish My University Used
Jun 04 2008 
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To Sarah Perez: You’re right, real people don’t have time for social media. In fact, real people, especially the ones that work at my university, don’t have time for the web period.
My University Is Not Into Social Media nor the Web Itself
Yesterday, I received a hard and shocking slap back to reality. I’m so used to being able to send an email, a twitter message, a friggin IM even and for once I couldn’t rely on these services. I couldn’t rely on the tools that help make my life so convenient and easy when it comes to connecting with others to get the job done. Yesterday, I had to request a transcript to change schools. Who knew the process would be so difficult? My request has actually been in effect for weeks. However, I had to send someone out to my school in order to get them to do their job. I was pretty pissed about that. I’m 7-8 hours away from my school and I was definitely not going to make that drive for a few papers and $15 in fees. I could not do any of this online. You just don’t know how confused I was about that.
These are the tools I would’ve used to solve the problem:
- Paypal – Hello! Get with it already. Paypal is the best way to make a payment online.
- IM – My school isn’t the type of school you’d like to email. They’re never on top of things, which is why I had to send someone out there to begin with. They’re slow, they know it, and they could care less. Yeah, they should hop on Skype or Google Talk.
- Mixx/Digg – I’d like to socially submit my requests and get my friends to Digg it up to the top of the queue for immediate response.
- Twitter – Could you please let me know when my stuff has been sent off? This way, I know you’re doing your job.
There was one interesting technological machine I had to use that I had mixed opinions about: the fax machine. Besides my cellphone, this was the only other piece of technology I used that I wasn’t sure I want to use. The reason I had to use it was because they needed my signature in order for my friend to be able to pay for my transcripts for me. If she has my social security number you better believe she has my permission to make a request on my behalf. It’s not like the transcripts are going in her hands anyway.
The Dreaded Fax Machine
While the fax got through quickly, fax machines are pretty fickle if you ask me. I’ve always had the worst experiences with them. As aforementioned, my university is never on top of things. Why would I want to fax something to them? I need to know you got it and you’re processing it or it’s in queue. I don’t want a million excuses and there’s plenty of excuses just waiting to be handed out when it comes to fax machines. You’re not fooling me.
Get With The Web!
Integrate Paypal so I can pay for these things online. Integrate IM so I can receive customer service quicker. Integrate Mixx or Digg because I’m popular on campus and know people who’ll Digg my request up. Integrate Twitter so that you can quickly and easily let me know that my request has been processed so that I don’t have to worry, and I’ll have proof of everything in case you want to give me a random ass excuse later on. Get with the future. Help make my life easier. Ok? Great! Thanks.
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Crazy how behind so much of the world still is – we forget when when we constantly live in our bubble. We're so progressive here, debating the differences between FriendFeed and Twitter and the like. Then you exit the bubble and people are like “Twit-a-whaaaa?”
Also: side note – you changed your theme! Sorry I didn't notice before, you know I live in RSS :) Love your social stuff at the top.
Yeah the new theme is really cool and really clean. Clean design is the best. I like the social stuff also. The round icons look very 2008.
FERPA. That is all.
doesn't it suck when the real world use of technology up and slaps you one :)
You should be in India! They won't even answer telephone calls in some of the universities here!
Fax machine? I think I heard about those… they plug into… what's that called again? Oh, yeah! A phone line. ;-)
Yeah, the new design is nice. Caught that the other day. Too bad about MyBlogLog forcing us to use that thing…. i need visual control over my widgets. Can't deal with it. </CSSSnobbery>
Update: Okay, sorry. Which is the new design? The MyBlogLog widget looks better with the white background.
Hee! Digging up your complaint might be a little bit of a stretch, but I understand your frustration. Especially for someone so web-savvy. Good luck!
I agree, popular people deserve better service than everyone else.
Excellent post Cordiva… I work in Education arena and all of these examples you give are such an great opportunity for Schools to become accessible and responsive to their client base, but unfortunately they are slow to adopt the very technology which would easily remove these frustrating barriers and put them in touch with their students and prospects.
I work in higher ed web dev and I'll certainly agree that colleges are extremely slow on the uptake of new technology. There needs to be some sort of mechanism that allows administration to review business processes every year (enhanced with student satisfaction surveys) and see if any new technologies allow for more efficient returns.
However, in this particular case with transcripts, there are a lot of legal issues involved (especially FERPA as someone else mentioned). In many cases a written signature is still required by law, and what constitutes an “online signature” is still murky.
The other issue is that even if the college staff used IM or twitter to communicate, they would likely become overburdened with requests very quickly and response times would still lag. Plus, most college staff wear 5 different hats anyway and do things beyond their job description because of a lack of sufficient people/budgets, which is why most are not receptive to changing thing which could potentially increase their workload even more.
Hopefully we'll get there…..at some point.
You probably put too much hope in your university social networking capabilities… In my university years we couldn't have done this due the technical limitations but even so the social part of the institution wasn't too bad, they were first of all very well organized and I liked that from the start. Now over the years I am still prowd I graduated the University of Phoenix.
That's who I'm also doing school with. I can't say I share the same sentiments. Not when it comes to the group projects anyway.
That's who I'm also doing school with. I can't say I share the same sentiments. Not when it comes to the group projects anyway.
You probably put too much hope in your university social networking capabilities… In my university years we couldn't have done this due the technical limitations but even so the social part of the institution wasn't too bad, they were first of all very well organized and I liked that from the start. Now over the years I am still prowd I graduated the University of Phoenix.
That's who I'm also doing school with. I can't say I share the same sentiments. Not when it comes to the group projects anyway.