Adopting Technology to Build Communities Around Residential Life
Posted by Nicole Andreas | July 1, 2009
Blog by: Daniel Ware, OrgSync Campus Liaison, University of Alabama
As many know friendships that are made in college tend to be friendships that last years even after college. Now many colleges and universities are jumping on the bandwagon to make on campus living mandatory for freshmen. Many freshmen are being put into dorms with large amounts of students, and it is up to the freshmen and their Resident Assistants (RA’s) to build a community among themselves.
When asked what he believed helps build a strong community, James Wright, an RA at Paty Hall at the University of Alabama, said:
“Communication between residents and RA’s is absolutely crucial to building a strong and functional community. In halls such as Paty, where constant exposure leads to understanding and frequent communication by word of mouth, flyers, and Facebook, the foundation of good community is easily laid. However, in halls like Riverside, where the most communication a resident can expect is a note; community is not as strong.”
Residence halls usually use flyers to pass on information to students, but unfortunately they are often thrown away and sometimes not even read. In addition, they can amount to a huge waste of paper, and many schools are beginning to support going green. Word of mouth sometimes can be a good tool for communication in small residence halls but are less affective for larger dorms. Also, the main message tends to get distorted as people relay the message to other people; kind of like the elementary school game, telephone.
Facebook, email, and other on-line tools are usually the best line of communication for college residents and their RA’s. Most students use social media outlets such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter and usually check them often. The tools are online and so are the students, so residence halls can easily keep students updated on involvement opportunities and build a community around residence hall life.
I think it’s crucial and so beneficial for residential life to hop aboard the social media train. It’s such an effective way of not only catching students attention but impacts retention of these outlets as well.
The traditional methods of notification (flyers, etc.) can seem wasteful. Social media interaction in the residence hall community would help to deter that waste, and other residents can connect outside of programs/events in their residence hall.