Maricopa Community College District Selects clearTXT Ubiquity.Ubiquity Ubiquity See also Omnipresence. Burma-Shave their signs seen as “verses of the wayside throughout America.” [Am. Commerce and Folklore: Misc. Provides a Cutting-Edge Means of Communication with Students, Faculty, and Staff CARY, N.C. -- The Maricopa Community Colleges have stepped to the cutting-edge of communication with their students, faculty and staff through an agreement with clearTXT. clearTXT's Ubiquity, the company's flagship information delivery and alerts platform designed specifically for colleges and universities, allows the colleges to connect with students via cellular text messages in the event of campus emergencies or need for immediate communication. As one of the largest higher education higher education Study beyond the level of secondary education. Institutions of higher education include not only colleges and universities but also professional schools in such fields as law, theology, medicine, business, music, and art. systems in the world and the largest provider of health care workers and job training in Arizona, the Maricopa Community College system is comprised of 10 colleges, 2 skill centers, and numerous education centers dedicated to educational excellence. More than 200,000 students attend the Maricopa Community Colleges each year while nearly 4,500 full-time and more than 9,000 part-time faculty and staff are employed. Increasing student communication opportunities is the primary reason Maricopa Community Colleges looked into mobile messaging to reach their students. Nearly all of the system's students commute to the various campuses and centers. In addition, many students in the system enroll in multiple colleges during the same semester se·mes·ter n. One of two divisions of 15 to 18 weeks each of an academic year. [German, from Latin (cursus) s or academic year. This multi-institutional attendance pattern, common among students attending community colleges, called for a single system-wide solution. The agreement between the Maricopa Community Colleges and clearTXT came after the successful introduction of the service at Estrella Mountain Community College (EMCC EMCC See Emerging Markets Clearing Corporation (EMCC). ). As a commuter community college whose students manage complex daily schedules, EMCC felt clearTXT would be essential in helping meet one of its primary goals - increasing academic engagement and faculty-student communication. A secondary, but critical, consideration was the ability to issue campus-wide emergency alerts. "For a number of years our college faced the challenge of how to best reach our students with the most up-to-date campus, classroom, and emergency information," said Roger Yohe, director, center for teaching and learning, EMCC. "The use of e-mail as a primary means of direct communication has been deemphasized as most all of our students now own cell phones and use text messaging Sending short messages to a smartphone, pager, PDA or other handheld device. Text messaging implies sending short messages generally no more than a couple of hundred characters in length. regularly." All of the college's approximate 5,000 students and 800 full- and part-time faculty and staff have opt-in access to clearTXT, granting permission to the college to text students, faculty, and staff on their cell phones in the event of a need for immediate communication. Students may opt-in via Blackboard, a web-based software system used by the district for flexible teaching and learning. After initially implementing the system in January of this year, the college recognized that as with most innovative technologies, early adopters on campus were the first ones to actually use clearTXT. In order to further increase user adoption and effectiveness, the campus offers regular faculty workshops on how to use clearTXT as a student communication tool. The ability to integrate with any legacy e-learning system has proven to be a key factor in promoting academic engagement and faculty-student communication. The clearTXT Building Block provides simple integration, built-in authentication (1) Verifying the integrity of a transmitted message. See message integrity, e-mail authentication and MAC. (2) Verifying the identity of a user logging into a network. , and automatic course messaging through Maricopa's Blackboard system A blackboard system in computer science is a type of Artificial Intelligence application based on the blackboard architectural model. The following scenario provides a simple metaphor that gives some insight into how a blackboard system works: . "Our honors program coordinator reports a greater connection with her students through their use of clearTXT," said Yohe. "We have a number of enrichment programs for our Honors students An honors student is a student in elementary, middle, or high school recognized for achieving high grades. Honors students are recognized on lists published periodically throughout the school year, known as "honor rolls". and the coordinator finds a text message is much more effective than an e-mail reminder." The college also experienced success with the system's emergency messaging capabilities. The day after the Virginia Tech tragedy, Estrella Mountain received an on-campus threat. As an integrated part of the college's emergency communication plan, an evacuation message was immediately sent to students, informing them that the campus would be closed until further notice. Students were directed to the college home page for additional information. "While we hope to never execute this particular type of message again, we were very happy with the way in which clearTXT helped us deliver the message to our campus community in a very efficient and timely manner," said Yohe. About clearTXT Founded in 2003, clearTXT is a leading provider of information delivery and alerts platforms for colleges and universities. clearTXT was created by an academic solely to provide communication solutions to the academic community. Its Ubiquity product enables a multi-channel approach for campus communications by sending messages via email, text message, ticker desktop window, instant message and pop-up desktop alert (both PC and Mac). clearTXT currently provides distributed information delivery systems to dozens of universities, including the University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati is a coeducational public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ranked as one of America’s top 25 public research universities and in the top 50 of all American research universities,[2] , Louisiana State University Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, generally known as Louisiana State University or LSU, is a public, coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and the main campus of the Louisiana State University System. (LSU LSU Louisiana State University LSU Large Subunit LSU La Salle University (Philadelphia, PA) LSU La Sierra University LSU Link State Update (OSPF) LSU Learning Support Unit ), Seton Hall and the University of Memphis The University of Memphis is a public research university located in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, and is a flagship public research university of the Tennessee Board of Regents system. . For more information, visit www.cleartxt.com or call 1-866-472-1901 (toll free). About Estrella Mountain Community College Estrella Mountain Community College is located on Thomas and Dysart Roads in Avondale and offers transfer-ready academic courses and job-specific occupational training to approximately 13,000 students annually. Estrella Mountain is part of the Maricopa County Community College District, one of the largest community college districts in the nation. For more information, visit http://www.estrellamountain.edu or http://www.maricopa.edu. About the Maricopa Community Colleges The Maricopa County Community College District is one of the largest community college districts in the nation. It includes 10 colleges - Chandler-Gilbert Community College, Estrella Mountain Community College, GateWay Community College, Glendale Community College Glendale Community College can refer to one of two colleges in the United States.
The neighborhood in northeast Phoenix containing PVCC is also called Paradise Valley, home to Paradise Valley Community Center, , Phoenix College, Rio Salado College, Scottsdale Community College External link
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