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ECU has pledged that they will throw some official weight behind it, which is dope, and also fitting. this fits into a narrative they are trying to build as well as their long term branding to get the rest of the state see them as more than just a party and medical school.
but the folks in their student services and related departments have been super helpful. i won't say who cam met with but they were pretty high up.
one of the things with schools (or individual professors) is to get them to help via:
1 - promoting it to their students
2 - standardizing their syllabus formats among their profs
why would they do 1? because it costs a huge amount to recruit a student. when kids fail out, that recruitment money is wasted instead of being amortized across their time at the school. so there is big money already in retention programs, as it impacts the universities' bottom line as well as their public perception. cameron found some great studies showing this financial link and has used them in speaking with officials about the app.
why would they do 2? if they recognize the financial benefit of a free (for them) means of boosting student academic performance, and all it took was to tell everyone in xyz department to use bullets instead of tables, wouldn't that be a no-brainer?
if i'm a prof, and i can guarantee that every student i teach, say, 100, is going to have reminders in the devices that they have with them every day telling them when there is an upcoming exam or paper (and later, giving guidance on how far in advance to study for them), i'm gonna take 10 minutes to cut and paste my syllabus from whatever format i normally use into one of the few that are assured to work with the syll abeye app.
cam got commitments from ecu, and 5 other major schools in NC to say they will be part of the pilot. (smoove, too. told school b, ecu is doing this. hten went to school c and said, ecu and school b are doing this, and just parlayed it until he had those 5 extra schools saying how can we be down?)
what we're trying to do at ECU (and any other college) is to get a department to do a metrics based study of several factors of academic achievement (missed assignments, zeroes, grades, etc) before and after sylla bye.
if we can show definitive studies linking the app to academic improvement, its a wrap, because all schools will jump on and we'll be moving more through institutional licensing channels.
cam is also creating an internship program for kids at his school to gain real world marketing and business and entrepreneurial experience while helping promote the app. the school is hype about that too.
peace & blessings,
x.
www.twitter.com/poetx
========================================= I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and not having much to show for it. (c) mad
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