Alternatives to E-mail
There are some cases in which e-mail may not be the most effective method of communicating with a particular constituency. The following alternatives are available at Boston University:
Web pages
As mentioned previously, Web pages allow the use of formatted text and graphics. Well-designed pages have the potential to be very effective in communicating information, regardless of how detailed or complex that information may be. A drawback to this medium, however, is that it requires a user to take the initiative to visit a site and view the information displayed (additionally, it requires that a user remember to return to the site to view any information that may have been updated). E-mail, on the other hand, delivers information directly to a user’s inbox and demands no more of that user than opening the e-mail message.
Web-based Bulletin board
Forums@BU is a Web-based bulletin board system that academic and administrative departments can use to post messages and announcements to communicate with the community. The utility can also be used as a discussion board, where people reply to posted messages. Departments might set up multiple forums dedicated to discussion on specific topics, for example.
A Web browser must be used to view the Forums@BU Web pages. Unlike mailing lists, message content posted to a forum does not appear in someone's e-mail inbox. However, it is possible to request e-mail notification when someone has responded to a message that you posted.
BU Today
Marketing and Communications publishes BU Today for students, faculty, and staff on most weekdays throughout the year. This is the primary source of news and information for the BU campus and is an excellent way to share information with these internal audiences. Announcements and news should be sent to today@bu.edu for consideration by the editorial staff.
Event information can be submitted online at www.bu.edu/calendar or by sending e-mail to the manager of the Calendar at calendar@bu.edu. You can also contact the Executive Editor, Art Jahnke.
BU Today publishes a daily broadcast email for faculty, students, and staff members, Monday through Friday when school is in session. This email is the preferred method of sharing announcements and event information with the BU community. Except in rare instances of extremely high impact information, the BU Today daily email will be used to meet most requests for broadcast email to the University community.
Mailing lists – a primer
Mailing lists, or recipient lists, can be dynamic, static, or a combination of each. The dynamic lists considered in this document are institutionally-generated and are based on data stored in the University’s central databases. The lists are updated regularly or are created on an as-needed basis for mailings and, because they contain data that is current, they are generally the most effective means to reach a particular University population. In some cases, a recipient group must be derived from data that is not contained in University central databases. In these situations, a dynamic list cannot be constructed and the sender must rely on a static list.
Static lists are built manually and are updated only as often as the list maintainer chooses to modify them. Common examples of static lists are those managed by locally-installed e-mail programs like Outlook or Eudora.
A third type of mailing list is one that can be created and managed via institutionally-maintained list manager software called “Majordomo.” While faculty, staff and students can create general mailing lists that must then be manually maintained, authorized faculty and staff can, in addition, create hybrid lists which support both automatic updating (based on changes in course registration or the personnel database, for example), as well as manual updating. For more information, see www.bu.edu/computing/mailinglists.
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