Convincing students to attend class is always a challenge. But as a college it’s vitally important that you find ways to encourage students attend class whenever possible. Throughout any level of school, attendance is the key to students staying engaged and keeping their grades high. If you want your students to succeed, it’s clear that you need to get them to attend.
Here are three ways you can use text messaging to boost attendance and improve your student’s experience:
1. Sending Mobile Alerts
The simplest and most obvious way to use college text messaging is sending mass alerts to students. If there’s inclement weather, you can reach out to students instantly to let them know whether or not the campus will be open. This eliminates confusion and ensures students know to show up if their class is still being held. SMS is ideal for this as 98% of all text messages are read, and 90% of them are read in three minutes or less. Furthermore, mobile phone ownership is highest among a college’s key demographic – ages 18 to 29.
You can even segment students into particular classes so that professors can send more specific updates. If an assignment or test is due, they can reach out to notify them. Professors can even create a recurring message to remind students of class every single day, or after they have missed one or two classes in a row!
2. Keeping Students Engaged
If students are actively engaged with you and the subject matter, they’ll be more likely to attend your classes. Experts believe that a student’s perception of lecture quality is one of the single most important factors in determining whether or not they attend class. Students can send texts to their professors with quick questions. You can even set-up keywords to provide quick answers to simple questions such as their class schedule or whether or not the school is open for the day.
Another useful way to segment students is by major. You can then send them relevant messages with important program or industry news to help boost their thinking skills on their respective major. Because it’s relevant, they’ll stay engaged with the university and their chosen industry as a whole.
3. Bringing It Into Classrooms
SMS can even be used in the classroom itself. Professors can run polls and surveys, using SMS to gather and tally the results. Using special text-to-screen capabilities, it can even be used as a tool to let shy students ask their questions anonymously if they’re nervous to ask something in front of the whole class, or if the classroom is too large. Teachers are even starting to incorporate SMS directly into assignments, letting students text answers or discussion points to them during class.
Encouraging college students to attend class is always trickier than it should be, but using a communication tool like SMS makes it easier. By sending mobile alerts, keeping students engaged, and using SMS technology in the classroom, you’ll be able to keep students interested and up-to-date. In the end, this will keep them coming to class and ensure they get the best college experience possible.
To learn more information on how integrating an SMS software can boost student attendance, click here!
Author Biography:
Ken Rhie is the CEO of Trumpia, which earned a reputation as the most complete SMS solution including user-friendly user interface and API for mobile engagement, Smart Targeting, advanced automation, enterprise, and cross-channel features for both mass texting and landline texting use cases. Mr. Rhie holds an MBA degree from Harvard Business School. He has over 30 years of experience in the software, internet, and mobile communications industries.