The College provides a variety of electronic communications channels - suited to different purposes. There are Push channels, Pull channels, and collaborative channels. You may want your audience to respond - or not, you may not want them to be able to opt out of receiving messages, or it may be a narrow group you are trying to communicate with.

There is no single ‘best’ method - you must consider the purpose and your audience and choose the proper method, or methods. Some are public, some top-down, some conversational, some passive and some active.

Whatever channel(s) you choose, please be mindful of everyone’s time and attention, and please refrain from adding to the firehose of broadcast email sent to the entire “campus Community” unless the message really is of interest to everyone. Just because you sent the message to everyone doesn’t mean that that you “communicated” – or that anyone actually read it.

Available communication channels include:

  1. Outlook/Exchange Distribution Lists - all Purchase College students, faculty, staff and administrators are provided with a College e-mail account. (Push)
  2. Broadcast Email (Push)
  3. Website: Student Portal and Faculty/Staff Portal (Pull)
  4. Campus Calendar Systems (RoomBook and LiveWhale Events) (Pull)
  5. Collaboration Website (SharePoint - committees, departments, Task Forces, Wikis, etc) (Collaborative - viewers can often edit materials posted here)
  6. Moodle (Students only) (Pull, Collaborative)

Each of these channels is described briefly below.

1. Outlook/Exchange Distribution Lists (DLs):

All Purchase College students, faculty, staff and administrators are provided with a College e-mail account. Email is the colleges “Official” communication channel, and everyone is required to check their email regularly.

This is a Push channel because you are pushing your message to a location where they will see it - their mailbox.

Exchange DLs provide secure and required top-down communication. External addresses cannot be included).  Faculty do not have to create their own class lists. Class lists, advisee lists, and others are automatically populated from Banner data nightly. Three semesters worth of lists are available - past, present, and future.

DLs are automatically set up for: All students in each class  +  All students in a major  +  All students in each academic division + All faculty in a department +  All employees in each department

To use a DL from off campus or via OWA: Send to group.name@purchase.edu - no special characters

2. Broadcast Email Messaging (BEM) System

The Broadcast Email Messaging (BEM) system allows anyone on campus to submit a broadcast email request. BEM requests are subject to a workflow that requires a college officer’s approval.

The BEM system can be used to send to both internal and external email accounts. BEM can use exchange DLs (described above) for narrow broadcast messages (i.e. all A+D students or all NSS Faculty and Staff), as well as campus-wide broadcasts like “All Students” or “All Employees.”

This is a Push channel because you are pushing your message to a location where they will see it - their mailbox.

Please use campus-wide broadcasts sparingly, and only when your message is likely to be of interest to your target audience. Unfortunately many people think that if they send their message to EVERYONE, they have effectively communicated – when in fact most of their 10,000 recipients with messages that are not of interest to them (Spam) just delete them.  The Broadcast email system is too often used to send to messages to everyone when a narrow audience would be more appropriate, diminishing the effectiveness of the channel as it fills with what most refer to as SPAM. Please do not send multiple messages on similar topics on the same day - and consider combining your items into a weekly newsletter as Student Affairs does. 

BEM is an ‘active’ or “push” channel since materials are pushed to recipients via e-mail. 

3. Campus Website

Home Page.

The website highlights “News Stories” and “Events” on the Portal Pages, and on Program or Office departmental pages. You create your news stories and events in the LiveWhale Content Management system - and make sure to “share” them with everyone so they can be picked up on the Portals or by other college units.

Anyone can propose that their news story or event also be included on the Home Page - but only Communications and Creative Services  can promote items to the Home Page.

The website is a Pull channel - you have to choose to go to the site, and your item may pull in a viewer while they are there, but there is no guarantee they will see it. 

 

Portal Pages for Students and Faculty and Staff.

 There are several audience-specific “Portal pages” on the campus Website – one for Current Students, one for Employees, and one for Parents.

To post your news, stories, and events to the portal page(s), go to the website and log into the LiveWhale CMS using the “Editor Login” that appears in the footer. Once you are logged in, use the “dashboard” link at the top right of your Browser window to get to the CMS Dashboard.

Then use the “Stories” tab to create News or Stories, and use the “Events” tab to create events.

Make sure to “share with everyone” and make sure to include an image with your Story/Event – the “Think Wide Open” bar is visual, and if you don’t include an image, all you’ve got is an empty white box.

4. Campus Calendar Systems (RoomBook and LiveWhale Events)

If you are creating an “Event” – please note that you MUST go into RoomBook to reserve campus space for your event before you publicize it on the web site. The LiveWhale CMS does not reserve the room for you – you must still do that in RoomBook.

Once you have created your Story/Event, make sure you set the “Privacy Options” (bottom of the page) to share with “Everyone”.

Once your Story/Event item is created and shared with everyone, you can apply one or more of the following tags that cause it to appear on the Portal pages:

  • Apply the tag “For Students” to show your story/event to appear on the Current Students Portal
  • Apply the tag “For Staff” to show your story/event to appear on the Faculty and Staff Portal
  • Apply the tag “For Parents” to show your story/event to appear on the Parents and Families Portal

Departmental web pages can consume the same News Stories and Events that are shown on the Portal pages. Your unit may be sponsoring a guest speaker, and that News Story or Event may be of interest to prospective students browsing your departmental web page. Create your Story or Event the same way, and ask your department to include it on their page.

5. SharePoint Collaboration Website

  • Many campus Committees or Departments have a SharePoint collaboration site for sharing information with the campus community and with their own team.  In certain cases, sites can be configured to share information with the general public.
  • Campus Committee and Community Information sites are visible to anyone with Purchase College Credentials (Students, faculty, staff, alumni).
  • “Department” and “Special Teams” Sites and are only visible to members of that department/team.
  • SharePoint sites  can contain a number of apps such as Announcements, Calendar, Document Library and Tasks.  
  • SharePoint calendars can easily be overlaid on other calendars in Outlook.

6. Brightspace Course Management System:

  • Announcements and Communications to students enrolled in a class or classes
  • Contact TLTC at x6440 or tltc@purchase.edu for more information