Monday's Daily News editorial focused on the forthcoming iConnect initiative and, while expressing belief that the university is "working in the right direction," the editorial highlighted several areas of concern I would like to address.
I should first point out that it is important to keep in mind that iConnect is part of a Microsoft Corp. pilot program in which Ball State University was selected to participate, along with only a handful of other universities. This program continues to evolve and is only now in the initial stages of development. Many features and customizations will continue to unfold as the service gains momentum and other universities follow Ball State's lead to provide full e-mail, blogging and other interactive services to all students, faculty, staff and alumni.
Rather than wait for each and every aspect of the program to be finalized, however, we felt it was important to position Ball State as one of the leading universities in this area by becoming an early adopter of this new technology.
In the Oct. 11 editorial, the Daily News challenged the university "not to settle for first place - to keep thinking of new ways to enhance our education with the latest technology."
The iConnect initiative puts Ball State in an exciting position to influence priorities and direction for Microsoft's overall program. This is precisely the kind of thinking suggested in your earlier editorial - an initiative that represents new technologies and our commitment to continue to explore and develop educational opportunities.
Additionally, there has been an expressed need, for several years, to provide alumni with e-mail that is connected to Ball State University. This is one of the steps in providing current alumni and future alumni an opportunity to maintain an ongoing relationship with the university.
Regarding the specific concerns raised in your editorial, I believe there were two primary issues.
The first of these was the fact that the account will require more effort to sign up for because an alumnus will have to set it up on his own. The reason for this requirement is that we wanted to provide students, alumni and employees of the university the ability to select their own account name and e-mail address, rather than forcing them to use one that had been pre-selected. We believe this flexibility is worth the effort, especially when the address selected will be a lifetime e-mail address.
The second issue involves alumni having to switch from their current Ball State addresses (username@bsu.edu) to their alumni addresses (username@ballstate.bsu.edu). I believe part of this concern comes from some confusion about when the iConnect accounts will be issued and how we anticipate that students and alumni will likely use them.
To clarify, all students will become eligible for iConnect e-mail accounts at the same time they receive their official Ball State e-mail addresses upon admission. As this is the case, we anticipate that students will most likely use their iConnect accounts for the vast majority of their personal e-mailing with friends, family and colleagues. Most people are familiar with the situation of having one e-mail address for work and one for personal use. The iConnect initiative allows us to offer a similar arrangement, in that we anticipate one e-mail address will be used for official business - in this case, your username@bsu.edu account - and one will be used for personal e-mail and communications. In this way, students can be certain that the e-mail addresses used for personal purposes do not change as they make the transition from students to alumni.
I hope this information is helpful. We are committed to making this new service convenient and easy to use.
Write to Loren at lmalm@bsu.edu
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