To many members of the Hillsdale campus, until a few days before spring break, the public folders system was little more than an inconspicuous icon on the school e-mail page. But after a rash of mass lost-and-found e-mails broke out the week before break, Greg Harms, the ITS system administrator, and Jeff Yost, head of ITS training and student services specialist, realized the college may not be as educated as they need to be about this useful feature of intra-campus communication.
“We are working on improving the education process on public folders for both faculty and students,” Harms said.
Possible changes include sending an e-mail each semester to inform the college about the system and making the computer policy handout distributed during registration more eye-catching and informative.
“Our biggest struggle is making the public folders system relevant,” Harms said. “People don’t post things there because they think no one will read it; and people don’t check the folders because they think no one posts anything they need to read. It’s a catch-22.”
This vicious cycle can have consequences beyond a cluttered inbox, Harms said. As users become used to seeing dozens of mass e-mails in their boxes, “notifications that need to go out in a timely manner are ignored as pertinent information becomes jumbled with junk.”
One obvious advantage the public folders have over mass e-mails is organization. Not only are announcements grouped under specific headings, but users cannot inadvertently delete a post as they could an e-mail, therefore saving them the trouble of losing track of important information and needing to have it resent.
In addition to serving as an up-to-the-minute bulletin board for campus departments, the public folders also serve as a classified ads page, Yost said.
“I’ve heard through the grapevine of people selling cars and even houses,” he said.
He especially recommends the buy-sell-trade folder as a resource for graduating seniors looking to clean house at the end of the semester.
Junior Matt Schonert and senior Wayne Thurman have found buyers for everything from books to X-boxes using the public folders. Thurman said he sold his items within 3-4 days of listing them. While both supplemented their posts with word-of-mouth advertising, they also said they received multiple responses from the folder ads alone.
Thurman checks the general announcements folder regularly as well, for everything from rides to the airport to updates on course offerings.
Schonert said he feels the biggest obstacle to maximizing the public folders’ potential usefulness to the entire student body is “getting the ball rolling.” He suggests, in addition to encouraging friends to post ads in the folders, to make a personal habit of checking the listings daily.
“I do it when I check my e-mail,” he said. “It’s not like they’re hidden away.”
“Ask your friends to post things,” Yost said. “Respond to posts and thank people for responding. And don’t SPAM. It decreases the functionality of the entire e-mail system.”
If a user must communicate a piece of information through a mass e-mail, Yost recommends checking with ITS before sending it.
Students are not the only users guilty of the inappropriate use of mass e-mails, Yost said. ITS is working with the different departments on campus to determine policies and educate faculty and staff about the use of e-mail and public folders for departmental and class-specific announcements.
ITS creates folders for individual departments as the need arises, Yost said. For example, the athletic department requested a folder to post practice and game schedules, changes in sports complex hours, and other announcements. Thurman said he checks this department folder regularly so he knows “the best times to work out without running into the sports teams.” Yost said ITS may also create a folder for Saga, Inc. to post daily dining menus (right now the menus are listed under general announcements).
“One reason mass e-mails continue to be sent is that they generate responses,” Yost said. “Even if the responses are complaints, at least the sender knows people have read the e-mail.”
For the public folders system to be effective, users must generate a “feedback cycle” for it as well, he said.
The key, Yost said, is “bridging the gap between ‘what is important to me’ and ‘what I think should be important to everyone else’ and what really is important to everyone else – in a timely and socially acceptable manner.”