School Notifications: Are You Suffering from "Channel Overload"?
How many different ways do you communicate with students, families, and staff?
Most districts today use a variety of communication channels, from social media to robocalls. But if you're using multiple channels without a clear strategy, you and your audience may be suffering from "channel overload."
The Evolution of School Notifications
School and district communication used to be pretty simple. Most school communication went via paper, either mailings from the school or notes from the teacher sent home in a student’s backpack. In an emergency, someone might have to sit and make phone calls. Major announcements—school board news, budget information, snow days—might be spread through the local newspaper or radio station.
That was it.
A Growing Ecosystem of School Notification Options
In recent years, technology has provided a number of faster, less expensive, and less time consuming methods for schools and teachers to disseminate information. Schools have adopted these new technologies one after the other as they have emerged in the hopes of increasing reach and engagement among students and families. This has left many schools with an extraordinary number of different channels for communicating with students, parents, and the community, including:
- Traditional channels (physical mail, local media)
- SIS portal
- School website
- School mobile app
- Emergency notification system (text, email, app, robocall)
- LMS/Google Class
- Websites for sports teams
- PTA website
- Remind or other distributed messaging application
Each of these channels may be used slightly differently. Some messages may be sent out over multiple channels for maximum reach. Other types of information may only be found on one specific channel. And some channels, like Remind, may be used only by individual teachers who choose to opt in.
Even with all of these channel options, schools still find that not everyone gets the message. The temptation may be to layer even MORE channels on top of the ones already in place to reach the stragglers. Does your district need a SnapChat account? Should you create a school Slack channel? Produce a podcast? Hire a skywriter? Where does it stop?
The Problem with Channel Overload
The truth is, more channels are not always better—and too many channels may be worse than too few. Channel overload can create a few problems for both districts and their intended recipients.
- Extra Work: Additional channels mean more work for school and district staff, who may have to remember to set up alerts and announcements on multiple systems.
- Information Overload: Using too many channels adds to the "information overload" problem. People tend to tune out when they are getting hit with too many messages from too many directions, especially if many of the messages are either redundant or irrelevant to them personally.
- Audience Confusion: It can be hard for students and families to remember where they need to look for different kinds of messages, especially if they have multiple systems they need to log into to access important information. This is especially problematic when teachers are using a variety of freemium apps and programs rather than a centralized system selected by the district.
Ironically, our ever-expanding ecosystem of school notification channels may be making families lesslikely to pay attention to school information. Who has time to keep up with it all? If I'm not sure where to go for what, and I'm seeing lots of information that doesn't apply to me at all, I may decide it's easier to tune it all out and trust that my kid will tell me if there is something really important happening.
Taming Channel Overload in School Communication
Getting—and keeping—everyone's attention may mean simplifying your approach to school notifications. Here are a few tips:
- Reduce channels: Decide on a few key channels, and make sure that both channel users and receivers understand what kinds of things they will expect to find there. Communicate your policies clearly (perhaps on the website, at back-to-school events, and through take-home paper information at the beginning of each year) so parents know where they should look for emergency alerts and school closures, homework reminders, or updates on school events.
- Consolidate messaging: Get teachers, coaches, and school administrators all on the same platform when it comes to outbound communication rather than letting everyone pick their own freemium solution.
- Don't rely on social media for critical messages: Facebook and Twitter may be perfect places to post pictures from the high school play or third grade field trip, but aren't the best places to post an emergency closure. Not everyone is on the same platforms, information is easily buried in people's feeds, and most people use social media to relax and connect with friends rather than look for must-have news from their children's schools.
- Personalize communication: Consider which messages need to be broadcast to the whole school community and which should be personalized for specific groups or individuals. Keep communication personalized wherever possible so people aren't overwhelmed by messages that do not relate to them—e.g., if the announcement is about a change in the football practice schedule, it should only go to team members and their families.
A New Approach to School Notifications
Getting school notifications right isn't easy. That's why we created eChalk Notify, a brand new school notification system that is fully integrated into eChalk's websites, classes, and groups. Notify can help schools and districts consolidate and simplify their communication channels.
Notify sends alerts and updates directly to everyone's mobile devices via the mobile app. Because it's fully integrated with eChalk's websites, it allows webmasters to post announcements to the school or district website and push them to the mobile app in one simple step. Teachers, coaches, and group leaders can post information to their class or group pages and push personalized messages out to their group members.
This approach is easier for students and families, because everything is in one place and they only get messages that pertain to the schools, classes, teams, and groups they are part of. And information doesn’t get lost: when a parent sees a new message on Notify (about a change in schedule for a class trip, for example), they can return to the eChalk website later and see the same information on the class page and in their personal calendar. It's also easier for school and district staff, because they don't need to post the same thing in multiple places to get the word out to everyone.
With eChalk and Notify, channels can be consolidated.
|
Standard Approach |
With eChalk |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
When schools reduce the number of channels they use, they often find that stress levels go down and community engagement goes up. What could be better than that?
Are you interested in simplifying your communication channels? Contact usto learn more about eChalk Notify.