Lester Erikson Ona

STRENGTHENING FACULTY STUDENT CONNECTIONS WITH TEXTING Table of Contents Background............................................................................................................................................3 Communication Challenges...............................................................................................................4 Faculty Texting Supports Positive Outcomes...............................................................................6 Semester Text Track............................................................................................................................7 Why Students Respond Well to Faculty Texting.........................................................................8 Faculty Texting Alleviates Pressure on Faculty............................................................................9 Faculty Texting Benefits Administrators..................................................................................... 10 Why Signal Vine?.............................................................................................................................. 11 Faculty Texting Takeaways............................................................................................................ 12 BACKGROUND Faculty play an outsized role in a college student’s life. Not only do they facilitate learning and convey knowledge—whether in the classroom or online—they are often the only employees at the university, aside from athletic coaches, that engage students regularly throughout a semester. In fact, faculty have the highest engagement with students across the student’s institutional academic journey. Although advisors, resident assistants, and other key professional staff certainly impact a student’s college experience, faculty members have more influence than anyone else. Faculty drive student engagement and enthusiasm both in and out of the classroom. For this reason, strengthening communications between faculty and students is imperative to engaging students positively throughout the academic journey. Students who feel comfortable communicating with faculty are more likely to complete the course requirements and, because they have built trust with faculty, they feel emboldened to ask questions and articulate challenges prior to them becoming issues. Dynamic, engaged communication helps faculty understand students’ motivations and interests. It also helps faculty become more adept at creating a classroom environment that is equitable and that reaffirms learning objectives. Strengthening Faculty-Student Connections With Texting 3 COMMUNICATION ?? CHALLENGES ? Despite the benefits of communicating often and well, faculty and students often struggle to do so. Faculty have full inboxes and competing demands on their time and attention. This and other limiting factors make student-faculty engagement more challenging. Both students and faculty struggle with changing workloads and time constraints, perceptions and realities of power dynamics, and the perceived value of communication. There’s often not an easy, direct, and trusted way for students to reach faculty. The same goes when faculty are trying to reach students -- Emails get lost, and communications within the LMS are often overlooked or limited, being seen more for alerts than conversations. COVID created additional challenges. The move to remote and hybrid learning models often removes the informal interactions before and after class which students and faculty often use to build trust, answer questions, and generally get to know one another better. WO RK LO AD Workload and Time Limitations. Faculty and students are busy. Faculty juggle multiple demands and divergent responsibilities—from teaching classes and overseeing research projects, to performing administrative duties. Faculty are expected to teach multiple sections of differing courses, each with unique student profiles and dynamics. They tread a fine line between pushing students to perform better and spending hours negotiating grades and assignments. Students may not have it any easier. In classes, they must figure out the level of effort required to achieve their desired grade. What’s more, over 70% of students today are 25 or older and already have a variety of responsibilities beyond studying. Strengthening Faculty-Student Connections With Texting 4 Expectations and Trust. Students typically have up to six different classes with five different faculty members. That means they are working to meet five different sets of expectations. Many are unsure when to ask questions to clarify expectations. Which faculty member can they ask what type of question? For example, one faculty member may offer more flexibility while another has very firm deadlines and assignments. Trust is a critical element to student success and T RUST includes being consistent, open, and responsive, and yet students often do not have enough interaction with faculty to build an adequate level of trust. During COVID, faculty felt that they were being asked to do more with less and were told to dial back on assignments and grading. On the other hand, students reported feeling that they had to do more. Betsy Barre, Executive Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Wake Forest University, hypothesized that “students might be doing more than we expect of them because we haven’t actually communicated what we expect.” Communication challenges for first generation and low-income students—due to perceived power dynamics—were particularly exacerbated by changes brought about by COVID. Such students struggled to maintain their presence with faculty while faculty set new performance and participation expectations. For many, it was harder to navigate already tenuous connections with faculty. They lacked clarity about what was expected of them and when to ask for help. Value. Students and faculty may be unaware of the value of engaging in regular communication. In fact, there is a correlation between a faculty members’ strong communication skills and how well students meet learning expectations. Strong faculty-student communication also translates into student access to opportunities after graduation. COVID has underscored the value of economic benefits of education. Although not directly responsible for students’ post-graduation employment, faculty play a role in helping students position themselves for work that is commensurate with their experience and education after graduation. During the pandemic, students who continued building relationships with faculty had an advantage at graduation. Institutions may not yet realize the value of strong communication skills in the classroom, too. Students and faculty benefit from moving away from “a sage on the stage” class model (one-way communications or telling) to emphasizing mutual learning (the exchange and exploration of ideas) on a journey to understanding. Research shows that bidirectional communications, such as in the mutual learning model, lowers stress and creates a positive experience for both faculty and staff. Strengthening Faculty-Student Connections With Texting 5 FACULTY TEXTING SUPPORTS POSITIVE OUTCOMES FOR STUDENTS AND THE INSTITUTION Signal Vine’s Faculty Texting is a campus-wide solution for communicating with students, designed to expand student support beyond the communications they receive from campus administration. It supports the student experience while also mitigating faculty overload. It makes it easy for faculty to reach out to students with reminders, assignment updates, attendance concerns, or other types of support. As well as interacting with them with positive feedback, answering questions about the lessons, or other real-time or interactive engagement. Because students spend more time texting than they do communicating through other channels, Faculty Texting builds student-faculty engagement easily and directly. Faculty Texting supports student onboarding, guiding new students through the exciting and sometimes bumpy beginning of a semester. By reinforcing early communication, Faculty Texting helps students acclimate to each class’s unique standards and expectations more quickly. Behavior and performance expectations can be emphasized and clarified through the crucial add/drop period. Faculty Texting supports student retention efforts—building on advising’s use of texting as a nudging tool—by simplifying communications about each class’s cadence, structure, and faculty. It also helps students manage time and stress with quick access to resources. Faculty Texting can identify early warning signs of student struggle and provide supplemental academic support with just-in-time guidance and reminders. Strengthening Faculty-Student Connections With Texting 6 Semester Text Track 2 weeks Before 0 weeks Week 4 Week 7 Week 10 Week 11 Looking forward to having you in class. Please complete your class intro and writing sample. Class starts tomorrow. Please make sure that you bring the Harvey book and read chapter 3 & 4 (not 1 & 2). Looking forward to meeting you tomorrow in Keller 525 @2p! Assignment 2 is due on Friday. For those of you who have submitted rough drafts, do not send me book reports. This is an analysis. The writing lab is open from 8a-10p M-F. Here's the <> to make an appointment. I finished grading your exams --- excellent work! Tomorrow we are kicking off the Jones work. Bring in your team slide deck and any questions on the presentation. This week Teams 4, 5, and 6 will be presenting their findings. Be prepared to ask insightful questions. to Team 4 Way to knock it out of the park! Nicely done! to those who submitted rough drafts I read through your document. It feels more like a book report than an analysis. The writing lab is open from 8a-10p M-F. Or let me know when we can meet and discuss. to individuals who didn't crush it Hi [Name] - good effort on the exam. Let's set up some time to go over your answers. to Team 5 Fantastic analysis and read out. Very impressed! to Team 6 Great teamwork --- I love how you each supported each other through the presentation! It's been a great semester! Celebrate! Strengthening Faculty-Student Connections With Texting 7 WHY STUDENTS RESPOND WELL TO FACULTY TEXTING 1 Students, regardless of age or other demographic factors, are more likely to use texting than any other type of communication. It is easy, responsive, and it eliminates emails that may pile up and seem like spam. “I check my email once or twice a week and it is full of spam. A lot of emails are not relevant to me.” 2 Faculty Texting builds faculty-student trust. Communicating with faculty can be intimidating for students. Face-to-face meetings and emails have a formality that underscores the faculty-student power dynamic. Texting makes it easier for students to ask any question or seek feedback, and it can make it easier to have face-to-face conversations as follow up. It builds trust: “I feel like I really know Professor Callahan. We have been texting back and forth and so I felt more comfortable going in to speak with her about an assignment I was struggling with.” 3 Faculty Texting helps students meet expectations. Gentle reminders, hints, and guidance in texts help students trust faculty members’ sincerity in supporting their success. “I appreciate getting the text that is on one hand reminding me of an upcoming assignment, but really encouraging me to do my best by being thoughtful and using my resources.” 4 Faculty Texting also alleviates the pressure on students and faculty members to respond immediately. “I just sent you feedback on your draft. Let me know if you have any questions.” Texting enables a student to think about their question and their response. They can contemplate their answer or be expedient. Strengthening Faculty-Student Connections With Texting 8 FACULTY TEXTING ALLEVIATES PRESSURE ON FACULTY 1 Faculty Texting eases communication with students by changing how queries and information are delivered and answered. By taking conversations out of the context of peers who might judge their questions—or the intimidating 1:1 office hours—Faculty Texting takes advantage of a “casual directness” that students are accustomed to. “I noticed that you haven’t turned in your assignment. Does the prompt make sense to you?” 2 3 Texting also helps faculty easily communicate deadlines and more quickly understand when students are unable to meet expectations. “Tomorrow’s assignment is due at 5pm; let me know if you have any questions.” Texting reinforces connections to resources, reducing pressure on faculty to offer learning support for each student. “The lab assignments need to be an analysis, not book reports. Check in with Ashley, the TA, if you have any questions.” Nudging students to use the resources when it is specifically relevant to their success increases the likelihood that they will use the resource. Strengthening Faculty-Student Connections With Texting 9 FACULTY TEXTING BENEFITS ADMINISTRATORS 1 Faculty Texting is built on JIT rosters. Outdated rosters due to slow integrations and updates are frustrating for students (who are missing information), faculty (who aren’t getting information to the right students), and for administrators (who aren’t able to keep the SIS-LMS data synchronized fast enough for student registration changes. Faculty Texting can be updated JIT on a 10 min cadence to keep students and faculty communication lines clean. 2 3 Faculty Texting retains conversation archives. Archived communications support administrators working through petitions for exceptions and reduce the expectation of faculty and students for quick responses or documentation. Faculty Texting supports faculty and student privacy. Faculty no longer need to share personal contact information, an expectation that has become common since COVID. With both call forwarding and data masking, faculty are able to respond to student inquiries in a timely manner without having to use their personal lines. Strengthening Faculty-Student Connections With Texting 10 WHY SIGNAL VINE ? Signal Vine was born from Harvard research on the power of nudging to support retention. Over 600 institutions now text millions of students each year with important reminders and encouragement while gaining insights from the Voice of the Student® to better align resources and support for students. Knowing the value of the faculty student connection, Signal Vine launched Faculty Texting to empower every faculty member and TA. Signal Vine’s patented technology supports institutions beyond administrative functions, helping faculty members identify and focus on the students who need support the most while maintaining the privacy of their personal information. Faculty can delineate how they want to message students on a common platform without having to pull reports. They can reach out to all students, students across sections, specific sections, subgroups, or directly one-to-one. The platform gives faculty the flexibility they need while responding to students’ desire for personalization. Faculty Texting provides transparency in faculty-student communications. Signal Vine’s central console manages and archives conversation history for every student, while also providing alerts on incoming texts, seamless updating of course rosters updated based on SIS data, and the ability to expand authority for TAs or collaborative teaching models in a centralized communication hub. Building Strong Faculty-Student Connection Through Texting 11 FACULTY TEXTING TAKEAWAYS Faculty-student communication is easy to build and can be strengthened through texting. Students want to engage with faculty but may be intimidated at first. Faculty Texting eases communication and helps establish trust. Faculty want to support students, yet they often struggle to get students to respond or to know which students need the most guidance and when. Texting helps faculty close these gaps. Faculty Texting provides administrators with a common platform for faculty communication while collecting useful data to inform resource allocation and protecting individual privacy. Strengthening Faculty-Student Connections With Texting 12 Signal Vine is the leading higher education AI messaging platform transforming how you reach, support, and engage students throughout their life cycle. With more than 50 million student interactions, Signal Vine’s Blended Messaging® personalizes engagement using AI, workflow automation, and one-to-one messaging to keep students on the path to success. Signal Vine has been improving enrollment and retention outcomes with a proactive approach across the entire campus and student life cycle. The company partners with more than 550 higher education institutions, including college access programs, community colleges, public and private four-years, and alumni programs. Reach the right students with the right information at the right time. For more information, visit signalvine.com Written By: Produced By: Jesse Boeding, EdD Ashley Belz, Marketing Associate Lester Ona (Graphic Designer) Radha Marcum (Copyeditor)