I came across an interesting article in Inside Higher Ed just now, “Well, if They’re Already Using It ….,” which is one in a series of articles about the Educause conference that was going on last weekend. Basically, the article is about what to do about students who come into college with well-established habits in terms of things like email and social networking sites and the like: should the university force them to use their system (e.g., you must use your my.emich account and your EMU email even though both are awful), or should the university adapt to students?
About half-way through the article, we get to a discussion of a presentation at the conference about what happened when Northwestern decided to go with Google to handle its email and such. It goes on for a while so I won’t quote it all, but here’s a taste:
When a student using the new system logs in — either with a Google account or a university netID — he or she will see what looks like a regular Gmail inbox, with a few differences. There’s a purple Northwestern logo, for instance, and a link to the university directory next to that for Google’s Web-based calendar application. And instead of an address ending in gmail.com, as with a regular free Gmail account, the account has the @u.northwestern.edu domain, which is also what officials dubbed the service.
There are also no advertisements.
That’s a key part of the agreement, which also provides the system, and its maintenance, to Northwestern free of charge. It was enough to make Woodward wonder: “What’s the catch?” An official at Google’s Educause booth told Inside Higher Ed that part of the company’s strategy is to get “users for life”: students who rely on Google services early on and will take those habits with them after graduating.
Northwestern users also get all the other Google services built in– Google Docs, calendar, chat, etc., etc., etc. Things were not completely trouble-free, though any switch to a different email system has a certain amount of problems. Interestingly enough, Google seemed to be sensitive and accommodating to issues of privacy, FERPA, etc.
So, um, someone tell me again why we shouldn’t do this?
I’m ready to switch.
This is an intriguing article, Steve. I know some people at Northwestern, have visited there, and from all i gather, it has a reputation for being very well run, very efficient and very strongly oriented toward academics and quality student services. If they have this Google thing going, it’s probably every effective and was thoroughly checked out.
EMU probably can’t do it, however, because all the officials in charge of the current system will be opposed.
Hey – one thing to praise ICT for: its scheduled “down time” for maintence yesterday ended before it’s scheduled time
to be back up.
Well, we already have google-based email in pilot at the COB. The administration was reasonably supportive.
However, the pilot has been anemic. I think the main reason has been that email is just technology. For this to work, you’d essentially have to convert the whole school and get everyone using it. That’s a big job.