Advice to Baruch College

My suggestion for Baruch College is to continue to incorporate already popular new media tools into everyday use. Baruch College is taking a step in the right direction by having a twitter account and Facebook page but they do not spread awareness of these pages very well. Most students already use these social networking tools so it would not be so hard to ask (or even require) students to follow or friend the college. Baruch uses these tools for announcements but once again very few people are actually aware of this. Once they spread awareness of their social network accounts they can use twitter for most if not all announcements which can replace outdated slower methods like the CUNY Alert system which usually informs students way too late, or after they already found out about an event through another means. Other forms of new media such as Skype can be used in conjunction with online classes in order to create class discussions while still offering the convenience of an online class.  

Another suggestion I have for Baruch College is to completely revamp the Blackboard website or scrap it entirely. Blackboard has a clunky, outdated layout and is the victim of random crashes and downtime. While there have been many improvements to Blackboard’s stability its design still seems very out dated and cluttered. Most of the tabs on the Blackboard site aren’t used by a professor and are left completely empty the entire semester. Other professors add their own custom tabs with the already default tabs causing extra clutter. I suggest that the amount of tabs per class be limited to 3 or 4 to reduce clutter. All professors should be required to fill each tab with the appropriate information and should professors not find it necessary to use Blackboard it may need to be replaced or removed entirely. Lastly students should not have to modify the layout of the website on their own. It should already be in a clear and concise format. Displaying classes a student had 3 semesters ago isn’t helpful and once again adds unnecessary clutter; while a student can adjust this on their own they shouldn’t have to spend the time to figure out how to make Blackboard neat.