Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 2/17/05 Section: Campus News

MySJSU is offering a new messaging service for faculty members to communicate with students.

Common Management Systems project manager, Carrie Medders, said this service started in December 2004 and was intended to be an administrative tool for sending information to students.

Because a lot of students use personal e-mail accounts, problems can arise when students and faculty members try to communicate with those accounts, Medders said.

Messages can bounce back to the sender or may not get through because of filters or full in-boxes, Medders said.

Instead of collecting individual e-mail addresses, MySJSU will let faculty members send messages using students' user identification numbers.

Students can log into their MySJSU accounts to see their messages, similar to a regular e-mail account.

The person who sends the message has the capability to monitor whom has checked their message, Medders said.

Dennis Jaehne, chair of communication studies, said the "campus needs a legal, electronic way to communicate with students," in order to keep records of messages sent notifying students of needing to drop classes, pay fees and other issues involving their status as students at San Jose State University.

The system creates a legal receipt when students click on their messages, so all messages are documented, Jaehne said.

Also, every message has an expiration date, selected by the sender, at which time the message will delete - a feature you don't get with standard e-mail, Medders said. Receivers can delete messages, as well, she said.

Medders said another difference from regular e-mail accounts is that the communication is only one-way - students cannot respond to messages using this service.

In addition, attachments cannot be sent with the messages, as with regular e-mails, but links can, Jaehne said.

With MySJSU messaging, instructors have the ability to send information to targeted audiences, such as specific classes, sections and students, rather than posting the information on a general page, which provides security for both faculty members and students, Medders said.

This system limits a professor's messaging ability to his or her students only, while administrators have agreed to a policy that limits their use to targeted messages. This policy prohibits the use of advertisements, in hopes of keeping viruses and spam out of the messaging system, Medders said.

Enhancements will continue to be made with the messaging system but there have been no problems with it thus far, Medders said.

Jaime Fonseca, a junior majoring in accounting, said while he does receive messages from the Bursar's Office that remind him of tuition due dates, this system won't work well for receiving messages from professors.

Students would have to check the site on a regular basis, or else it won't be beneficial, Fonseca said.

But, if students want to know what's going on, they need to check their portal, Jaehne said.

Alexandra Belick, an undeclared freshman, said she has received messages using MySJSU from two professors - one regarding adding a class and another with class syllabus information.

Belick said the service is fairly self-explanatory.

"It's pretty much like e-mail," Belick said.

Thus far, this e-mail-like service has been running smoothly, Medders said.

"Students are reading them," Medders said. "Faculty members have been using it and they're very excited."

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