Leeds City College
College finds innovative new ways to use text messaging to better communicate with students and staff.
Background
Leeds City College’s Keighley Campus dates back to 1825 when it was originally set up to educate engineers. Over time the College became known as Keighley College and merged with Park Lane College in the summer of 2007 to become Park Lane College Keighley.
The College has over 590 full-time 16 – 19 year old students, and 2,000 part-time adults, with over 600 courses available.
- 590 full-time students
- 2,000 part-time adults
- 600 courses
“As well as being highly efficient, text messaging also saves us money. Sending a message is cheaper than making a phone call, and with TextAnywhere we just pay for the messages we send. The use of SMS will certainly continue to grow within the College as we find new and innovative uses for text messaging”
Ian Garner – Leeds City College – Keighley Campus
Requirements
The principal had sent a New Year’s Eve greeting to students via text message and following very positive feedback, the deputy principal funded a trial to contact students-at-risk by SMS, which soon expanded to be a full service for all students:
- Checking unauthorised absences
- Communicating room changes
- Providing reminders for coursework and exam deadlines
- Detailing revision and homework questions
- Confirming appointments with tutors
- Providing individual feedback on coursework
- Confirming teams and times for sporting fixtures
- Communicating with part-time members of staff
Solution
The College uses the TextOnline and TextCampaign web-based applications to send individual messages and SMS campaigns to larger groups of students. Tutors have their own secure login to be able to send messages to their classes from any PC that has a web browser.
“We chose TextAnywhere because the service was reliable, the messages were cheap compared to others, and the service conforms to the Data Protection Act – a very important consideration,” commented Ian Garner of Leeds City College in Keighley.
Project Successes
In a survey carried out by the College to determine the students’ view of text messaging within the College, 94% of students considered the SMS service an effective means of communication.
“Since using SMS technology we have seen improvements in both student attendance and on-time coursework submissions,” commented Ian Garner. “As nearly all of our messages arrive in less than 10 seconds, tutors can rely on the service. Contacting students has become much more effective and time-efficient.”
Range of Services
TextAnywhere empower organisations across both the commercial and public sectors to communicate better with text messaging services that enable the sending and receiving of SMS messages, through online and email applications.
They also offer a Developer Toolkit for clients to integrate texting into their own applications, as well as a White Label service for partners who wish to offer TextAnywhere’s services as their own, to find out more email us at [email protected].
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