Expanding communication mechanisms: they're not just e-mailing anymore

Students are walking around with cell phones, making calls and text-messaging. For many, this has now become their main communication mechanism with friends and family. College faculty and staff still count on e-mail as the main communication tool, amongst themselves and with students. Student demand for e-mail accounts from new students before they even arrive on campus has increased exponentially in the past couple of years. Web pages are used to provide information to the outside community and internally, across campus. Web pages have often become the main mechanism for providing step-by-step documentation. Meanwhile, wikis, blogs and MySpace® have entered the online communication world. Students look at our web pages, but how often? They all have college-provided e-mail accounts, but do they use them? What is the best mechanism these days to get the word out, and what will be the mechanism in the future? This paper will explore the mechanisms and approaches that students, and others on campus, are using to communicate now, and will present thoughts on where we're going in the future and the impact that will have on user services.