N.I.P.
(Network/Internet/PDA)
those Student Affairs Problems in the Bud
Patrick
Chang
Associate Dean of Students at Ramapo
College of New Jersey
Posted July 31,
2002 Student
Affairs Online, 3 (Summer)
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
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!
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