N.I.P. (Network/Internet/PDA) those Student Affairs Problems in the Bud

Ramapo College of New Jersey, a public liberal arts college in northern New Jersey with a rapidly growing residential population of over 3,500 full-time students and a total population of over 5,000 undergraduate, graduate and part-time students, is a relatively young (30 years) institution. The College prides itself on taking advantage of the most recent technological innovations. Within the Division of Student Affairs, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs, such as Palm Pilots) are being employed in an innovative model known as the "N.I.P. " (Network/Internet/PDA) system.

The challenges to our division lay in the areas of New Student Orientation, Residence Life, Judicial Affairs and Security where a more efficient means of tracking resident data, judicial incidents, and quick referral to college and state mandated protocols became an increasingly high priority.

Prior to the digital era, we had relied upon large, ungainly binders that contained housing rosters, banned lists, protocols, and forms. The bane of an On Call Administrator's existence was a rainy night at 2 a.m. where they would have to pull out three separate binders and lean one of them against a pole or garbage can to file an interim suspension or incident report. Today, each staff member is equipped with a PDA where such information is now accessible on a handheld device measuring less than 6 inches in length. The amount of money saved on printing and reprinting costs more than made up for the relatively low cost of our N.I.P. system.

You can accomplish similar goals if you possess the following on-campus resources:

• Access to a network for sharing files (LAN, WAN or VPN)
• An Internet account
• Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's) for each staff member

The Pilot Program

The original "N.I.P." model was implemented with the New Student Orientation program. Issues that the staff and volunteers faced included: communicating itinerary changes to over 600 new students over a 4 day period (which led to a large number of print jobs), the inevitable frosh who forgot their itinerary and forgot which group they were assigned to, and collecting a significant number of evaluations at the conclusion of the program.

Orientation group assignments were placed onto Excel spreadsheets and itineraries were entered in Microsoft Word on shared network files enabling designated senior and orientation staff to make edits "on the fly." Such data was regularly "hot-synched" to PDA's owned by the orientation staff enabling them to provide quick and accurate information regarding missing groups and addressing any questions about the itinerary.

The orientation site (currently located at http://www.ramapo.edu/academics/firstYear/orientation.html) was designed to be interactive enabling students to not only access updated itineraries, but also to: establish their e-mail accounts, complete "quizlets" on library research, register to vote, get greater detail on orientation programs, performers and speakers, learn about their specific orientation leaders, and complete an online evaluation of orientation that helped provide results in a matter of hours as opposed to the weeks spent previously tabulating handwritten ones.

Such innovations helped to cut down on significant printing costs and provide accessible information to parents as well as their students. Most importantly, the N.I.P. system enabled large quantities of time-sensitive data to be shared within minutes. For example, enterprising student employees took digital images of each day's events and created impressive photo collages on the web site. We didn't realize just how useful this system would be until the opening of the College was delayed by a week because of water testing issues forcing us to condense orientation from its' original 4 days into 2 1/2; days. Calls to all students and their families with instructions to refer to online revised orientation itineraries helped create a seamless transition experience (albeit a condensed one).

N.I.P. Expanded

The promising success of the N.I.P. system encouraged us to expand the program into the Judicial Affairs/Residence Life and Security dimensions of the College.

Currently, all protocols, housing rosters, banned lists and forms are written, edited, and stored on secure network files shared by Security, On Call Administrators and Emergency On Call Counselors. Since uploading of such information is automatic, e-mail notification is sent out whenever a protocol, roster or form has been changed so that the staff member is cognizant that they have "hot synched" updated information.

The Internet is employed to extract such information as digital image files from the Security site to create a photo library of banned students. In addition, the Orientation office is employing the Internet to access data on our entering freshman class (i.e., current e-mail address) for purposes of direct marketing. For example, an athletics staff member could send a customized e-mail out to all new students who had indicated high school experience in field hockey for purposes of recruitment. Or a First Year Seminar professor could apprise students with experience in broadcasting about their specific section dedicated to radio.

The end users (On Call Administrators, Emergency On Call Counselors and Security staff) possess all of this information on their handheld PDA's. Snap-on expansion modules enable us to photograph damage to college property and forward them along with an incident report (written on the PDA) to the judicial officer by that night. The Palm OS system enables college wide phone directories to be stored and easily accessed. The N.I.P. system has helped provide information to all involved parties and keep lines of communication open. Its applications within Student Affairs work are seemingly endless.

Future applications

Audience Satisfaction Surveys

We are looking into developing instant surveying mechanisms for use by Student Activities units to cull instant audience feedback after a performance or social event (i.e., "how did you hear about tonight's event?") where several PDA's could be employed and hot-synched back into a central database for quick tabulation.

Student ID data extraction

Palm-based magnetic card encoders and the development of customized C++ programs are being analyzed to determine if student ID data can automatically be extracted into a Word document to further speed up the Incident Report process

Wireless Internet access

The installation of wireless transmitters throughout campus and on PDA's would further enhance the ability to instantly retrieve data, files reports and send them out to all pertinent officers in as close to real time as possible.

The Essentials

Software

• Documents To Go (for reading and editing Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint presentations)
• ACDSee (for digital imaging files)
• SurveyMate (for surveys and questionnaires compatible with Microsoft Access)

Hardware

• Handspring Visor PDA's
• Eyemodule (for photographing purposes)
• Xircom wireless module (for wireless Internet access)

Caveats

Based upon our experiences, we recommend:

• Emphasize constant training and retraining. At times it seems to be frustrating, but a sad fact is that once you master a software application, it is usually time to relearn everything as a new version conveniently wheels itself out.
• Given the highly confidential nature of the data, secure password systems need to be implemented to activate all PDA devices.
• What is considered to be state-of-the-art a year ago will probably be "old school" by the end of the fiscal year. As a result, keep it affordable. We have been employing Handspring Visor handhelds and have been particularly happy with their expandability capabilities via their springboard module expansion slots.

Please feel free to write me at pchang@ramapo.edu with any ideas, suggestions or innovations that you may have come up with. I'm always fascinated to hear how others have "N.I.P.ped" their Student Affairs problems in the bud!