Posts

Martha Lanaghen

Are we Reaching Students Through Their Preferred Channels?

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It feels right to create support departments, on campus, that are staffed with friendly, caring and efficient staff to assist your students.

But is that based on an old communication paradigm? Do they really need us when they’re already on campus – or would they be more inclined to engage with us actively if they could reach us in the “locations” they frequent more like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and perhaps most importantly text messaging?

There’s not doubt that innovative schools are using these tools — but mostly it seems like an afterthought, and certainly they haven’t become the primary source of connection — we still prefer: “Come to my office,” or “call me.” What if we reached them where they live and made these alternative channels – our primary channels?

One of the advantages of this strategy is the incredible information that can be gathered from tracking and monitoring these communication channels – unlike office visits and phone calls, we can capture all the keywords, common phrases, frequent questions – and now we have real science to inform our resources (human and web-based), and improve the information we give students in the first place.

I suspect there are some instances when a real person cannot be replaced – but I’m beginning to believe that we could increase student satisfaction and engagement, while also reducing cost-to-serve, by employing robust, high-tech contact center strategies and tracking technologies.

Martha Lanaghen

Faculty – The Career-Readiness Missing Link

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We recently attended a fabulous day of faculty development at West Tennessee Business College.  Michael Brandwein, an Emmy Award winning author and speaker, entertained and taught a room of eager faculty and staff.  The focus of his teaching was on engagement strategies for learners — how to make the classroom as engaging as possible.

The transformation tools were incredible — simple to implement and it was easy to see how these tools will make the classroom more engaging and improve learning outcomes.

The real magic for me, however, was in the simple tools that Michael shared to help students see that a JOB was the desired outcome of their time in school.  Simple things, like saying, “we want you to attend class because your employer will want you to attend work — this is preparation for a JOB, not just school.”

How are you working with your faculty to ensure that their language not only engages students, but also sets student expectations and engages them, from day one, in thinking about the end goal — a career!