Starting June 20, the entire eConnection will be available in the format you see here. Once the site is fully active, faculty and staff will no longer receive the entire eConnection via email. However, you will receive weekly emails – three emails per week when classes are in session – with headlines and links to updated eConnection items and calendar events. All submissions will also be handled through a link on the site (look to the right of this post).
The new and improved eConnection will organize information by category in a user-friendly manner (announcements, calendar items, lectures, UMR in the news, deadlines, etc.). All of the same information currently included in the eConnection will be available here at econnection.mst.edu.
While the UMR office of public relations feels the eConnection in its traditional format has been a big success, there are several reasons for this change, including the following:
-- The eConnection has become too big to organize without more technological assistance.
-- The current volume of submissions and eConnection-related correspondence by email is difficult to manage.
-- The vast majority of submissions must be edited for brevity, etc. (requirements on this new site will result in organized and streamlined submissions).
-- Problems with listservs have made it difficult for some employees to subscribe to the eConnection and sometimes subscribers are dropped unexplainably.
You will be able to access the new eConnection online any time you want (or regularly whenever you get a reminder by email). The site will be updated daily and timely events will always be pushed to the top (no need to resubmit items). Our new calendar feature will allow readers to see what is happening on campus that day and that week. The new eConnection will also be full of links, so you will be able to choose what you want to read more about and what you don’t. In this way, we hope to mitigate some of the messages you are currently receiving by email and avoid “spam-like” behavior.
The new eConnection, like the old eConnection, will contain information that is believed to be of interest to a diverse campus population. Urgent messages that have a direct impact on the campus at large will still be sent to all employees via email.
We’re looking forward to launching econnection.mst.edu. We hope you like it.
