Ensuring seamless learning during the pandemic

Laurie Donley, Director of Enrollment Management and Student Services, Kent State University-Tuscarawas

Like others in our industry, in March 2020, I sent my employees home. That week, I had two priorities, 1. Making sure my staff had the support and tools to continue working, and 2. Making sure students knew we were still available to support them.

Our small but mighty team is responsible for the campus’s main phone line and all student services units, including Admissions, Financial Aid, Academic Advising, Veterans Certification, Academic Support Services, Student Life, and Student Accessibility Services.

We quickly learned new ways to use existing and emerging technologies. Many of the adjustments we have made will continue beyond the current pandemic.

To ensure calls are answered, we have updated our website to include direct phone numbers for key department staff. We used a combination of call forwarding and Cisco Jabber telephony on our computers to ensure that we could receive and make calls without having to use our personal phones. We also used a combination of hunt groups and Cisco Jabber telephony to continue answering the main phone line.

We already have a counseling appointment scheduling program created by programmers at Kent State University. But we needed something that would fit across all our services and be easily and quickly developed by end users. Luckily, our Director of Network Services asked me if I had heard of Microsoft Bookings. He had recently learned enough about the system to think it might help us.

With a quick and very basic tutorial, and a willingness to experiment, we are creating a service, assigning people, and providing students with our schedule to book virtual appointments that automatically create Teams invitations. Those requesting our services do not need a prior relationship with Kent State University to use the reservation system, nor do those requesting our services need to download an app. This allows us to use Bookings for future students as easily as we do for current students or colleagues. Participants join the appointment via computer, smartphone or landline. Since the virtual meeting feature runs through Microsoft Teams, we have the full functionality of Teams. If attendees join from a computer or smartphone, we can use video chat, written chat, and screen sharing to enhance the meeting.

We quickly learned new ways to use existing and emerging technologies.Many of the adjustments we have made will continue beyond the current pandemic

Going forward, we will continue to offer virtual and in-person bookings using Microsoft Bookings and Teams. We understand that some prefer virtual options while others are eager to see us on campus again. We also found that virtual services allowed us to expand services and fill service gaps faster. We learned that the virtual format allows several regional campuses to share academic mentors. Currently, I am advising students at a campus over an hour away from mine as we work to hire a permanent academic advisor for the program.