Bb Connect

This meeting was specifically setup by Bb on July 14 to discuss CSU campuses using Bb Connect.

I was surprised to find that so many of the CSU campuses (15 of them) using this product:

Cal State Northridge

„ Cal State Fullerton

„ Cal State San Francisco

„ Cal State Long Beach

„ Cal State Stanislaus

„ Cal State Dominguez Hills

„ Cal State Pomona

„ Cal State East Bay

„ Cal State Bakersfield

„ Cal State Channel Islands

„ Cal State San Bernardino

„ California Maritime Academy

„ San Francisco State University

„ San Jose State University

„ Sonoma State University

For all campuses but one, the client is the campus safety office. The question is, can we get more value from this system that the campus is already paying for. Knowing that Bb Connect now has many, many uses. For examples:

Call students to remind them to pay their fees.
Call students to remind them of other important deadlines like financial aid.
Call students on issues such as Swine Flu, Fire Updates, Earthquake preparedness, etc...
Call at risk students about their attendance.
As well as notifying students about LMS actvities.

I suggested that campus safety officers are not going to be happy if the University starts sending lots of other "spam" down this channel to students.

What I learned is that you can use the same system, but have an entirely different caller id, e-mail sender signature, and subject lines. So the same system is used but it looks like to the students that it's a different system. So you can have "LMS Updates" and "Campus Emergency" messages appear very differently.

Then we discussed how to approach the CSU about this. My suggestions were:
Since there are 15 campuses purchasing the system, a calif. state univ systems license would be wise so each campus wasn't procuring and contracting each time. This would require licenses to get on the same timelines (at end fiscal year). However, who is the "owner" of this at the CO or at the campus levels? This is obviously not an LMS purchase and hence out of my domain.

This is really about campus communications. Each campus has their own University Communications Director or leader. The vision of that individual may or may not be open to using a communications system in this way; and yet any Vice President might also see it's potential (Business Affairs, Academic Affairs, etc.). So the use of this application spans such a large cross-organization of a University, it's a political challenge to determine who is best to lead a discussion on this.

Other thoughts?