Proposition to my College

[Haku]

Hey guys! I'm in the Student Government Association of my college and I'm planning on proposing an idea to them tomorrow in our meeting. I wanted to know what you guys think:

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I've been a provisional secretary for Enrollment Services, answering calls and taking messages. I've been an operator for the switch board. I've been asked to review messages. In all that time I've made an observation. People are having a hard time trying to communicate with our faculty and the school itself. I have heard them complain to me, "Finally! A person!" because every time they call they only get voice mails, and when they leave a message, they are never called back. And the thing is, half the time, their questions don't really seem that complicated. Complicated enough to need aid from the corresponding person, but not enough that they would have to actually go to the institution in person. That is the problem people are facing. They simply don't have the time to come in person at the required date.

The problem with Drop Ins is that you don't know whether the person will be available at the time you are available. The problem with appointments is that two people need to take time off of their busy day to meet in the same room at the same time. The problem with phone calls is that, although they can be in different places, they need to be consciously present at the same time. Emails fix this problem. Now you can communicate in asynchronous times; you send an email about an inquiry and wait until the person replies whenever they are available. But the problem with emails is that thousands of people are sending you thousands of different questions to the point that you're overwhelmed. There is no possible way that you could read, evaluate and respond to so many emails in time. Not to mention, with all the people waiting in lines to get their answers, nobody has time to check emails or return phone calls.

My suggestion is to embrace technology and create a Forum. For those who are not familiar with the term: an Internet forum, or message board is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived.

To put into perspective, they're like public emails. If applied, I believe that communication between students, faculty and parents alike will improve greatly. In a Forum, you would not have to be physically nor consciously present in a set date or time just to ask "When can I register for the next Semester?"

Also, since our posted messages are public to the eyes of everyone, you would not need to repeat the same message. Just like that, a single message has answered the questions of thousands of people without wasting any resources at all and you didn't even have to be present for it. And if a person has a question related to the subject but their answer was not in it, then they can reply with another posted message in that same 'Thread' (a single conversation). What will happen is that, eventually, an FAQ will form on its own. If somebody had a question to a specific topic, all they need to do is read the thread discussing said topic. Chances are, their questions will be answered, if not they can post in the thread. Of course, there will still be a need for formal appointments if the matter in question is strictly private and confidential.

Furthermore, we could also use the forum to bring together the different campuses and students. We could have a general discussion area for all of Lyndhurst, Paramus, and Ciarco students -including evening students. Where they can discuss on certain topics, whether relevant to a class they're taking or based on popular social trends completely irrelevant to school; they could also post and share videos from various sources (like youtube) and more.

If this Forum goes through, however, it will need maintenance:

>It would create new jobs with pay, requiring either Student Aids or more experienced Faculty members to monitor the Forum as administrators or moderators; making sure nobody is linking to illicit sites, harassing other members or using foul language.
>It is imperative that we formulate a set of rules from which the users must abide.
>We must emphasize on privacy and security; meaning no one should be submitting specific information like their Social Security Numbers, payment bills, or their home addresses.

[Jinsoku Akuma]

Something tell me this has been used before somewhere else and I'd like to think it worked..Could work very well with your school/company whatever. This is a good idea to bring to them Nam. Genius like always.

[Ume]

I can see this as a perfect way for a larger community, basically. I think this can work out.

[Tenshu]

I assume you are not intending to use a free forum like Proboards? If that is the case you are very right in saying that someone needs to be hired to the position and that will be no easy task. This sounds like a reasonably expensive endeavor unless all of the outlets you use are low in cost or free. Student aids are definetely a good route to take.

Let me warn you about forum's and real life, because I actually did this for one of my own clubs back in high school. It failed miserably and the reason for it was that people never got into it. Student run websites are often either neglected by their owners or ignored by their peers. So the sense of community you are looking for likely won't come from that forum unless you really push it. Forum's are not nearly as easy as picking up a phone and calling the front desk, or sending an E-mail to the person you want to get in contact with, so instituting a forum for your communication would only work if you provided something that could not be otherwise easily obtained.

The idea on paper looks really good. You create a place where people can come and share idea's, ask questions, and communicate with each other. But doing this under the false pretense that if you build it they will come will only cause your forum to fail.
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That said I still think its a great proposal

I know after that you might not believe me but I really did think it was thorough as far as what will be expected and how it will be run. If its a forum for the entire college you may even be able to get help from the university in either directly running it, or at least providing an adequate webmaster.

[Haku]

Thanks for the feedback! xP

And actually, I'm not sure how we'd make the forums yet. I was actually considering proboards as a first option since it's free, we're not really making a profit out of it and I don't know how to make an independent forum. But I guess it wont go through unless the forum is its own thing and not linked with proboards. I think proboards saves data from our forums, so that might not be favorable for an institution -but then again, I already mentioned we would keep confidential information out of the forums.

[Jinsoku Akuma]

I know a few other forum based websites I can list. Invision free,forummotion,zetaboards,jcink.

[Haku]

Oh, yeah, I know sites like Invisionfree. In fact, invisionfree was the first type of forum I knew about; then they switched to zetaboards. But what I mean is, whether -as an institution, we'd need to make a forum that is not 'branded'. A forum that is completely ours and not linked with some other organization. I'm only assuming this though since I know nothing about copyrights and securing confidential information. I hope there is not a problem and I am able to assist in making a forum with a system I am familiar to instead of starting another one out of scratch. (I assume we have to write all the codes or something? O.o)

[Tenshu]

Forumotion is terrible. Not just saying that because we are on a proboards site either. Proboards is my favorite free provider. But you are right, it may be unfavorable for the university.