Submitted by Mike Grenville on Sat, 27 Mar 2004 16:33

Braintree College in North Essex, UK, is to use SMS to provide support and communication with students

Staring in the Autumn term next September, the college will use a customised version of grouptxt from Cy-nap to communbicate with its 1000 full-time students.

The college will use the service for various types of communication. These will include providing support around coursework, information on college social events, and good news/congratulations messages. Another obvious use for the service will be for short-notice notification of college closure, or changes in lecture rooms.

Replies to messages are returned to the 'txt inbox' on the computer of the staff member in much the same way that e-mail is handled.

"We know from our experience that the vast majority of students use text messaging in their everyday lives, we are simply engaging them with a medium that is comfortable" comments Andrew Pierce, IT Systems Team Leader at Braintree College. "Hopefully, txttools will be instrumental in increasing student retention and achievement through personal, pastoral care and open the way for innovative learning experiences perhaps using voting and remote collaboration."

www.txttools.co.uk

www.braintree.ac.uk