Ohio University students hoping to hear a ringtone in the case of an emergency will be unable to sign up for OU’s text messaging alerts for several weeks.
OU is switching to a new emergency notification system hosted by a program called Blackboard Connect. OU’s current notification system is down because officials are switching to the new program.
Students and faculty can register for the new platform when it launches in about six weeks.
“The old system still exists as it always has; we have not updated it because we knew when students came back, we would slowly transition out of the old system into Blackboard Connect,” said Joe Adams, associate vice president for Risk Management and Safety.
Officials are abandoning the old system in the process of launching the new system.
“We are in the process of transferring data and writing the programs,” said Jill Harris, Emergency Programs manager. “We will be in that implementation phase pretty quickly, within the next week or so.”
Phase one of this process will place collected student and faculty information into the new database. For about six weeks, those individuals will not be able to opt out of the current text messaging notification system. Those wanting to register for the text services will also have to wait.
However, other forms of emergency notifications will still be available to students in the upcoming weeks.
OU students and faculty can remain updated with OU’s emergency alert telephone hotline and campus email notifications. For those walking to classes, emergencies are broadcast through the outdoor notification system, and those still in their dorms can read the notifications via CATVision.
After reviewing 12 different presentations, OU officials narrowed their options down to four before deciding on Blackboard Connect.
“We do not rely on one method, such as texting, for emergency notification,” Adams said. “We have a series of systems that we can communicate with. They are purposefully redundant so that we can be sure the message gets out there.”
Blackboard Connect will make the notifying system easier, Harris said. It is one platform that will house the many campus emergency notification systems. Connect will allow officials to announce an emergency in one place and update all accounts at the same time.
“It will be a quicker notification,” she said. “It is just logging into one system, as opposed to going into each one of those separately to launch the message.”
“The safety and security of our students, faculty and staff are a top priority for Ohio University,” Executive Vice President and Provost Pam Benoit and Stephen Golding, vice president for Finance and Administration, stated in a press release. “Along with the efforts of our community to be attentive to safety issues, the Blackboard Connect system will help us create the type of environment necessary for our work as students and educators.”
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