Contact details

  • Sophie Hughes, s.g.hughes@bath.ac.uk OR Lucy Wilcock, l.c.wilcock@bath.ac.uk
  • Dept/Service: Bath Assessment Centre, Student Services
  • Project Duration: until 1st June, 2009

Background

What are you planning on doing and why will SMS texting help?

Bath Assessment Centre is planning on using the Edutxt SMS software as an ‘alert’ tool to contact students who are using our Needs Assessment service. (Students both from the University of Bath and other institutions use our service). We intend to use SMS as a one-way communication tool from us to the student, sending them ‘alerts’ at particular stages of the Needs Assessment Process:

  • Reminder to send their paperwork (If necessary)
  • Reminder of their appointment the day before (Always)
  • Alert that we have sent their Draft Report to them (Always)
  • Reminder to approve their Draft Report two days before the 10 days are up (If necessary)
  • Alert that we have sent their Final Report (Always)

We envisage the new SMS system will benefit the Bath Assessment Centre in a number of ways:

  • It will reduce the time spent chasing students for their paperwork
  • It will reduce the number of forgotten appointments, saving time and money
  • It will benefit students who do not check their email regularly
  • The scheduling function will be useful for sending texts on a Sunday to remind a student of a Monday appointment for example

How will this be managed?

The administrative staff will have basic training on the system and will be the prime users. We would like to be able to link up to our current Access database in order to access students’ mobiles numbers directly from the SMS system.

What questions are you trying to answer?

The pilot will identify if the use of sms text messaging is effective for staff and students. Will it improve communication? Does it add value compared to more other methods?