College advising goes online

Students in the College of Arts and Sciences can now connect with their advisers through instant messaging.

On Sunday, the Academic Advising Office of the College launched a new instant-message advising service in hopes of making advisers more accessible to students.

The idea, said Molly McGlone, assistant dean for advising in the College, is to “connect with students in a different way,” ultimately with the goal of encouraging students to speak to their advisors more.

However, “[IM] is not meant to replace face-to-face advising,” McGlone said. “It’s meant to get the word out, get students to recognize that advisers are there to help.”

One of the main benefits of the new service is its real-time responses, McGlone said. Through IM, students have immediate interactions with their advisers — something which is often lost when communicating through e-mail.

“If I can ask a follow-up question during IM, I can give you a more specific answer,” McGlone said.

But the new advising tool also has its drawbacks.

It is suited to general questions, not major-specific ones, and is currently only available to students in the College. If questions are more involved, students will be redirected to other advisers.

While this is the first IM advising service to be launched on a school-wide basis, individual advisers have long used instant messaging for their students.

Niel McDowell, associate director of academic advising in the College, has been offering IM advising to his students since the last academic year.

While he admits to seeing low traffic — receiving questions from “only half a dozen students from time to time” — he maintains that there is value in instant-message services.

“It’s good for quick, nuts-and-bolts questions about rules and regulations and dates, and that’s what I think the format is good for,” McDowell said.

The College IM advising tool is modeled off of Penn Library’s more established services which offer students the option of sending librarian questions through chat, instant messaging and text messaging.

In 2010, the Library received 5,300 questions in total, a 29-percent increase from the previous year’s 4,100, according to Marjorie Hassen, director of Public Services for the library system.

Hassen credits the popularity of the services to changing habits within the student body and the convenience of the tool.

“Students are online all day long,” Hassen said. “Sometimes we even see questions coming in from people studying in the library building.”

Hassen added that some people are uncomfortable asking questions or asking for help, so these services allow them to do it in a non-confrontational way.

Staff Librarian Charles Cobine has been working with the College to develop the new IM advising tool, and McGlone and Hassen both hope that the service will appeal to undergraduates “as another way to communicate.”

Advisees can access the service on Sundays from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m., Mondays from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. and Wednesdays from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

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