Monday, April 12, 2010

Advice to Baruch College

There are few suggestions that I would make to Baruch regarding using new media to improve the College. First, Baruch needs a social networking site where all students and professors can interact with each others. Students do not have to create a new account for that; all they need is their Baruch user name and password to log in. Creating social networking sites for Baruch College is great because students can write any problems that they have such as registration, information about clubs, classes’ recommendation, and so on. And other students who have experienced similar problem can give feedback or even professors or advisor can directly answer it. It is also a great place to built network of friends since not everyone is staying in college after class or joins clubs and so on because of work schedule or other problems.

Second, every students and professors should have a twitter account. It is very useful. You can update the tweets regarding anything related to class, such as homework due, exams, read chapters, read additional articles that are related to class, if professor is going to be absent and so on. I know blackboard is there for this things but NOT everyone is checking their blackboard every day. If they had twitter, simply they can just get updates to their cell phones immediately and knows what’s going on.

Third, books are ridiculously expensive. My management book is 216 dollar. When professor said that every student in this class needs to buy a book, everybody was going crazy just because it was too expensive and couldn’t find used one because they updated the version. If they had eBooks, that would be much better than cheaper for students. They afford it and can print it for cheap. It is also easy to carry if its printable chapters, because most professors wants you to bring book to class.

Forth, I personally never had experienced with online class other than 3-4 times this semester in my New Media class. But I think, having online classes is great idea because not everyone can make it college because of their work schedule. If they have online classes, students can register according to their best schedule and experience the new way of learning.

Next, have a virtual library, campus, classroom where incoming students can check and see how college is. It gives students a better idea about the college.

Also, they need some kind of system where they can inform students about the upcoming events. I know Baruch does sent out emails but I sure many if not most students do not even read that email and just delete just like myself and ignore the important information such as job fairs, workshops, events, clubs, and so on.

Finally, Baruch needs to do something about the escalator and elevator. No matter how early you get to college, you will be late for class just because escalator and elevator are not working and the ones that do work are over packed and have to wait more than 10 minutes. I have been tired of waiting for elevators and getting late for class so I just use stairs everyday going all the way up to 12th floor which I get up way faster than that elevator.

7 comments:

  1. I agree about the textbooks. Way too expensive. They should make ebooks of them available. Or professors should choose the textbooks that are available for cheaper price in ebook format. Textbooks for the most part are ripoffs anyway. Hundreds of dollars spent on a bunch of books that you will never touch ever again.

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  2. Baruch should set up a twitter account and sent us information as it's happening. This would be great for professors as well, who want to post a last minute class cancellation. This way students don't have to wait on the professor.

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  3. YOur so right. When i get emails about upcoming events in baruch, I just delete them. They should have a better way of getting our attention. It's hard without annoying the crap out of us though. Imagine they started sending texts about every event to every student? I'll break my phone i swear

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  4. To Jchau: I don't like the idea of last minute class cancellations on Twitter. I do not carry my laptop with me because it is heavy and the textbooks that i have to bring sometimes are even heavier and I do not have Internet on my cell phone.

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  5. The virtual library suggestion and ebook sounds good. Virtual library will actually help potential enrollees to check out how the college looks like even without scheduling for a college tour.

    Ebooks are also helpful because if specific chapters are only to be discussed by a professor, then those specific chapters will only be the one to be downloaded by students. This will minimize the cost spent by students on books.

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  6. @ Nadia A: Yep, you have a point there. Not all students have internet on their phones. So last minute cancelling of classes on twitter will only benefit those with internet service on their phones.

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  7. I don't like that idea either. I think that Baruch or Cuny should text us a simple text message on our cell phone, so that everybody will be informed about cancelling of class.

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