Mass Notification Management Seminar To Be Held at EDUCAUSE 2015

Mass Notification: It’s Worth the Investment

Nick Mirisis, Business Development and Public Affairs at SchoolDude.com says investing in these mass notification solutions are important for colleges because they function well enough without additional work or worry from administrators.

“One of the things we specialize in is operations and support services management,” he says. “It is all the vital functions that are sometimes not top of mind for folks, but are crucial for an institution to run effectively. This is everything from facilities and maintenance management to the business offices and business services to technology management, energy and conservation, etc.

Mirisis says one big mistake colleges make is depending on paper to provide mass notification strategies. He says in today’s digital world, it doesn’t make sense to keep using paper.

“We were surprised in this day in age that the vast majority of institutions were doing this with paper, binders, posters on the walls,” he says. “It’s surprising when we think about how much technology we consume in our personal lives that this one element institutions were still largely doing in a paper format. The challenge of paper is that it’s such a costly and difficult medium. The moment you commit the safety plan and instructions to paper, it’s outdated tomorrow morning.”

Mirisis says because technology is such an integral part of students’ social and academic lives, mass notification strategies like the CrisisManager app will easily blend into their line of sight.

“I think all of us have become accustomed to, the next time we look down at our smart phone, there’s a little update icon staring at us in the face to go get some more information,” he says. “The instantaneous nature of it lends itself to the environment that we’re in. It seems more natural for folks to look at their smart phone for a piece of information than leaving a classroom and trying to find the poster on the wall to tell them what they need to do next.”

Takeaways for Deploying Mass Notification Strategies on Campus

• Colleges have endless options for mass notification strategies, including digital signage solutions and BYOD policies.

• West Virginia University uses 120 digital signage solutions and a threefold emergency message system to alert its campuses of a threat.

• Providence College uses the CrisisManager app to notify students of an emergency and action plans on how to respond during that emergency.

• Mass notification is not only for external dangers, but for internal ones as well, like a person’s mental health status.

• Industry experts say that investing in mass notification strategy solutions are beneficial to a college because they reduce worry and boost security without extra effort.

• Experts also say that colleges should ditch the old-school paper ways of mass notification. Technology is an integral part of students’ lives and a more effective way of getting an emergency message out.

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