Friday, April 20, 2007
In an effort to improve communication between faculty and students and improve emergency response time, the University of Kansas will implement Message Blox. The program will send out text messages to students and faculty members’ cell phones alerting them of class cancellations, weather-related KU activity cancellations, weather reports and emergency situations.
“After the microburst, we really realized that we have no effective way to handle rare emergencies like that,” Frank DeSalvo, associate vice provost for Student Success, said.
The University’s concern about establishing an effective form of communication heightened after the massacre that took place at Virginia Tech on Monday.
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When a message is sent through the Message Blox system to users’ cell phones, it is also sent to their e-mail and is posted on television monitors located in the Kansas Union and other hot spots on campus.
“It just points out that there is a real need for a system like this,” Mike Reid, director of marketing for KU Memorial Union, said. “It could have helped get the message out sooner than the 2 hours time it took at Virginia Tech. They found e-mail is great, but there’s not a lot of access when going to class.”
Reid said that eventually he wanted to link Message Blox with Blackboard and other systems at the University and to give student groups the opportunity to send mass messages through the system.
“Every cell phone user could go to a Web site and select which text messages they want to receive,” he said. “We could have an unlimited amount of message groups separated by faculty and students and their interests.”
Reid said he was unsure what criteria student groups would have to meet in order to have access to the mass-messaging system because the University had not developed the system enough to have a policy on that yet.
Each group or department at the University that receives approval to use Message Blox will select a system administrator. System administrators will log on to the Message Blox system on the Internet when they want to send a message. When a message is sent through the Message Blox system to users’ cell phones, it is also sent to their e-mail and is posted on television monitors located in the Kansas Union and other hot spots on campus.
The capability to receive messages from the University is already included in Sprint phones bought from the KU bookstore in the Union. The University began selling Sprint phones on March 26.
The University plans to offer Message Blox to all students and faculty regardless of their cell phone provider. Negotiations regarding who will fund the program are still underway among the Office of the Vice Provost of Student Success, the University’s marketing department, and other departments at the University who will most benefit from Message Blox.
During the first six months, Message Blox is running at the University, it will be free to Sprint users who buy their phones from the KU Bookstore in the Union. Visix Inc., which owns Message Blox, will provide the service for free as a trial period to the University.
The University plans to use central institutional funding to provide Message Blox to the rest of the University. Central institutional funding is money provided not by one specific department or departments, but from core institutional resources like the provost or chancellor’s funds. If there is not enough money in the fund or the administration does not endorse using the fund to provide the program to all students and faculty, those who wish to receive text messages from the University will have to pay a $5 fee.
“The assumption is whatever program we are going with will be available to incoming students,” said David Mucci, director of KU Memorial Union. “Our focus is to be ready for orientation. We would like to get (Message Blox) up and running through the summer.”
DeSalvo said the University was implementing Message Blox because most people did not use their e-mail anymore or they deleted important messages from University administration because they thought they were spam messages.
DeSalvo said it was Sprint’s idea to utilize Message Blox for Sprint users. The University saw the program as a solution to the question of how to alert students and faculty more quickly than through e-mail.
Kansan correspondent Francesca Chambers can be reached at fchambers@kansan.com
— Edited by Trevan McGee
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