ON CAMPUS
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them reliably, as many millennials regularly
change phone contracts and numbers.
Unwelcome or ineffectual
communication is not something academics
and administrators wish to engage in.
A survey of education professionals by
Tribal showed educators were keen to
communicate with students in a safe
and secure way that protected their own
professional and personal integrity and
increased their chances of being heard.
Get with the program
Need to communicate more
effectively with students?
There’s an app for that.
By Peter Croft
S
tudents who feel engaged with their
courses and institutions are more
likely to succeed and less likely to drop
out – key considerations for providers in
Australia’s competitive vocational and higher
education sector. So, how can providers
leverage digital technology to keep the lines
of communication open and connect with
their students more effectively?
The digital era has thrown up a plethora
of platforms and channels to replace old
fashioned ‘snail mail’ and email missives,
but research suggests a dedicated app has
significant advantages over other methods.
DROWNING OUT THE NOISE
Wind the clock back a decade and online
communication consisted of email and
electronic notifications. Students may have
been able to enrol from home and submit
assignments online, but student support was
still largely a 9 to 5 affair. A rich, two-way
communications experience characterised
by immediacy of response was neither
available nor expected.
The ubiquitous uptake of smartphones has
changed young people’s communication
habits and expectations. Letters, telephone
22
calls and emails are almost anachronisms in
an era where technology is at the heart of
every transaction.
Today’s young adults are always ‘on’,
using multiple screens, having multiple
conversations and psychologically
‘downloading’ dozens of messages every
minute. The communication isn’t two-way,
it’s multi-way, across many devices and
platforms, including Facebook, Twitter,
Snapchat and WhatsApp.
Disseminating essential information and
having it seen or heard amid this clamour is
increasingly difficult for education providers,
particularly given the propensity of students
to tune out communiqués that aren’t in the
medium of their choosing.
Australian males and females aged
14–24 spent about 9 hours and 14 hours
respectively on social media each week
in 2018, according to Roy Morgan, but
that doesn’t mean they want to use
social media to talk to their teachers or
receive information about enrolments
or coursework. A 2018 Tribal Group
survey of current students revealed social
media was not the preferred method of
communication for the majority.
Despite their collective reputation for over-
sharing personal information, millennials
are uncomfortable about opening up their
private lives to scrutiny if education providers
are added as ‘friends’ or contacts.
It’s a blurring of the personal and
professional that doesn’t sit well. Institutions
that attempt to use social media to bridge
the gap between email and more instant
forms of messaging run the risk of turning
students off and being labelled ‘creepy’.
Text messages are an equally ineffective
form of communication, according to the
research. Students tend to view them as
aggressive or spam, or they just don’t receive
THE APP ADVANTAGE
An app ticks many of the boxes for today’s
tertiary student cohort. They’ve come of age
in an era when apps are used for everything
from dating to ordering food and booking
accommodation. Little surprise that it’s their
favoured means of dealing with education
providers for academic and administrative
matters. More than 70 per cent of those
surveyed by Tribal stated a preference to
be contacted via a single, dedicated mobile
app, which covers all areas of their college or
university life.
Institutions have much to gain from
implementing cost-effective electronic
communication platforms to facilitate
healthy collaboration and more effective
student support. Benefits can include:
• the ability for educators and students to
collaborate via persistent group timelines,
where links, tips, hints and reminders can
be posted
• being able to engage with students and
provide near-immediate feedback that
better informs them ahead of their next
lecture or lesson
• more efficient communication, as
educators and students can communicate
one to one, or in groups, in real time
• the creation of collaborative spaces
where students can learn and support
one another with in-class activities and
group work.
In an era where businesses and institutions
are judged by the ‘customer experience’
they deliver, Australia’s education providers
can ill afford to leave immediate and
effective communication to chance.
Harnessing the power of mobile
computing to move communications
with students from the transactional to
the relational has the potential to pay rich
dividends in the form of increased retention
and satisfaction rates. ■
Peter Croft is APAC managing director
at Tribal Group.