Current Challenge

1. Service Task Force Final ReportPresident’s Emerging LeadersElectronic Communications with Students Team (PEL ECS)

2. Current Challenge • Determine the extent of the perceived problem of students not reading emails sent by the University • Examine the potential of developing the University’s portal(s) as either a secondary or possible primary mode of communication with students

3. Interviews • Perception that students do not read or act upon critical emails from the University • Perception that portal strategy duplicates One Stop online • Great deal of effort to solidify student portal strategy

4. Surveys • Pilot survey, 37 students • Formal survey, 100 students • 35 Freshman • 20 Sophomore • 20 Junior • 15 Senior • 7 Graduate Students • 42 majors

5. Survey Results • 70% described their University email account as their primary email account • 90% access their University email account every day • 70% receive “just the right amount” of email from the University, 24% receive “too many” emails • Nearly 80% delete some University emails without reading them • 58% delete emails because the subject line is irrelevant to them • 37% delete messages they believe to be impersonal or broadcast • 14% hit delete because they don’t recognize the sender name/address

6. Email Usage Data • Between May 1 and May 3, 2006 • 37,094 students accessed their University email account (approx. 77%) • Only 14% forward their University email

7. Literature Searches • University email policy better defined than most other schools • University would be best served creating their own effective writing best practices for email • Portal best practice documents cited in report, Portal Development for Undergraduate Students at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities: Fostering Capacity and Assuring Sustainability

8. Technology Changing Across Campus • Difficult to formulate recommendations on a moving target • Webmail was updated not once, but twice during the course of our report • University Counseling and Consulting Services announced a Podcast that offered students tips on avoiding procrastination and managing stress • University Libraries offers UThink, the largest academically affiliated weblog service in North America, and hosts 2,523 blogs • Academic and Distributed Computing Services (ADCS) has developed the “University of Minnesota’s Community wiki” with 69 wikis to date • Strategic implementation of enterprise-wide technology initiatives will ensure cost savings and eliminate duplicated efforts

9. Recommendations • Students rely on email to receive information, but may delete what they perceive to be irrelevant or too long and may perceive they receive too many messages • Reassert current University policy for communicating with students • Develop and communicate tips to assist members of the University community with creating email messages that are more likely to be read and acted upon by students • Create and enforce one way for University community members to obtain addresses and permission for group or mass emails

10. Recommendations • Technology implementations can be done at the department or college level, therefore, it is difficult to know what is available • Create and maintain an enterprise-wide communications matrix of available technologies • Create a department for communication technology development and implementation • Integrate existing technologies as much as possible to avoid the need to duplicate messages • Use the University report Portal Development for Undergraduate Students at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities: Fostering Capacity and Assuring Sustainability as the basis for further portal development