{"id":551442,"date":"2007-02-02T06:12:48","date_gmt":"2007-02-02T06:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/551442-sms-gets-message-across.html"},"modified":"2007-02-02T06:12:48","modified_gmt":"2007-02-02T06:12:48","slug":"sms-gets-message-across","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/551442-sms-gets-message-across.html","title":{"rendered":"SMS gets message across"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"2\">The university\u2019s distance education unit turned to SMS technology to keep in touch with its students when it discovered that almost none had Internet or e-mail access \u2014 but nearly all had cellphones. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">\u201cIt was fairly shocking to discover that our students, who are mostly senior teachers over the age of 35 with three year qualifications, had so little access to computer technology,\u201d says the unit\u2019s manager Johan Hendrikz. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">At first, SMSes were sent out to advise students that their course work had been posted and to provide them with reference numbers so the university could pursue cases of nondelivery but, before long, the unit was SMSing students to remind them to submit assignments and register for exams. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">\u201cWe could clearly see the impact,\u201d says Hendrikz. \u201cIf we sent out SMSes reminding students to register for a contact session, within 10 minutes the faxes would start buzzing.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">Over time, a comprehensive SMS support system was developed and integrated into the unit\u2019s student communication strategy. This year, the unit has sent out more than 230000 SMSes to over 13000 students. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">What makes the system unique is that it also incorporates several academic SMS tools to enrich the learning environment. The hope was that this would reduce the perceptual distance between learners and the university and reduce the drop-out rate, explains Hendrikz. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">The tools include an SMS-based quiz; open time when students can SMS questions to lecturers and receive a personal reply; a minilecture delivered via inter voice recording technology; and a short appraisal of assignments \u2014 delivered by the lecturer. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">\u201cWe conducted research across more than 3000 students and found that for them the most important consequence of the SMS support system is that it motivates them to persist with their studies,\u201d says Hendrikz. \u201cIf we achieve only that, then that alone is valuable.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php?t=65529\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<p \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The University of Pretoria has achieved such success using SMS technology to motivate distance students that it has developed an entire academic and administrative support structure around the technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}