March 3, 2006
eBoard to help streamline Purdue campus e-mails
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University will offer information sessions this month to introduce a new way to communicate with faculty, staff and students.
Two sessions will teach students, faculty and staff about eBoard, a new RSS feed service, which will cut down on the number of unsolicited e-mails users have to sort through. Presentations on eBoard will be offered from 3:30-4:30 p.m. Tuesday (March 7) and from 10-11 a.m. March 13 in Stewart Center, Room 314. All faculty, staff and students who currently use the Direct Student e-mail precess are invited to attend.
Developed by a campus-wide group and administered by Information Technology at Purdue, eBoard is a Web-based RSS, or Really Simple Syndicate, system that allows information to be posted online in a single location for subscription by students, faculty and staff.
Computer users will use a program, called an aggregator or RSS news reader, to select and fetch the information they are interested in. Such programs will let users choose and collect information from many different sources with a single, automated application. The program will check RSS feeds regularly, highlight new material and download it directly to the user's computer desktop.
The eBoard system was developed in 2004 following a survey of students that found students felt they were getting too many e-mail messages from campus groups and organizations. Many of the messages ended up ignored or filtered out as junk mail. As a result, the students missed some important e-mails, such as those from the Division of Financial Aid or the Office of the Registrar.
General messages, such as event notices from organizations individual students select, will be distributed via the eBoard. Messages that require a response or include significant information from upper administration will continue to be sent to students via direct e-mail.
Writer: Christy Jones, (765) 494-1089, christyjones@purdue.edu
Source: Daniel Whiteley, Student Services Technology and Assessment data steward, (765} 494 7416, dan@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
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