Education Business

It is widely known that text messaging is socially and digitally inclusive, over 98 per cent of UK adults now have a mobile phone. Many organisations are adopting simple-to-use interfaces from companies such as txttools.co.uk. This service allows the user to send and receive SMS text messages from their computer and track the delivery, much like e-mail, but with audited delivery. Having the ability to create discreet groups of students, clients, patients or staff can have major benefits when you want everyone to be notified with a single message.
    
Flexibility
Over 48 per cent of UK colleges and universities send critical messages with edutxt® an education specific text message application from txttools. edutxt® is completely flexible, so you can send a message to a group or to an individual person. Messages can be sent instantly or scheduled at a later time and date. The schedule can be set months or even years in advance and sent out when that message is relevant. Messages can even be edited right up until the scheduled time to allow for changes in arrangements. Students can be added to lists requesting information and replies may be automated or custom sent. Many organisations are now also incorporating txttools into their disaster planning; it is proven to be the fastest, most reliable method for communicating with large groups of people.
    
Students at Holy Cross Sixth Form College in Bury received their AS and A2 exam module results via text message. Nick Walker, IT manager, Holy Cross College, explains: “About 600 students opted to receive their results via their mobile phones earlier in the day than those who preferred to receive their results on paper. This was very successful and allowed the college to greatly reduce the queues associated with collecting exam results. Students were very pleased to be given the opportunity to receive their results this way.
    
“Holy Cross College, a Beacon College and in the top ten nationally for exam results, now uses text messages to student mobile phones regularly every day as an important means of communication. Almost all students carry mobile phones and therefore this is a very effective way of passing important information to them. In January when the college had to close because of the snow, the students and staff were sent texts each day to let them know whether the college was going to open or not, in addition to messages on the website and local radio. Around 8,000 texts were sent during the four days that the college was closed.”
    
Walker continued: “The texting facilities are integrated into the highly-regarded IT systems created by the college’s software development team and make use of the texting services provided by txttools (www.txttools.co.uk). Staff can type messages in to the systems for a single student or groups of students and opt for those messages to be sent via text, e-mail and/or displayed on wall-mounted terminals which display messages when the students swipe in and out of the college. By making use of the txttools XML connector the college’s programmers have been able to seamlessly integrate the texting service into their existing software so that staff don’t need to log into the txttools site to send texts.”

A logical step
Hopwood Hall College, more directly exploits the commercial opportunities provided by messaging. Prospective students can request to have course details sent directly to their mobile phone via text message.
    
“Text messages remain to be the favoured method of communicating among our target audience, so it was a logical step to integrate it into our marketing strategy,” said Andy Clegg, new media officer, Hopwood Hall College. “We receive the majority of inquiries about our courses via text message, and now we have the ability to monitor interest in particular courses and better target our recruitment drives by sending prospective students relevant, tailored information.”

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