Institutional Messaging Guidelines or Policy

[John_Lowe]

During InstructureCon this summer, the topic of messaging frequency emerged as a recurring theme in both presentations and casual conversations related to Impact. As new clients of Impact by Instructure, we recognize the importance of learning from the experiences of others, both their successes and their pitfalls, before embarking on our own journey. If you are currently using Impact at your institution, we'd greatly appreciate insights into your experiences regarding the effectiveness of different message types and their frequency in engaging users, while avoiding over-messaging.

Furthermore, we're curious about whether your institution has established any internal or public-facing messaging policies or guidelines in connection with Impact. These policies could serve as valuable tools to mitigate message fatigue and maintain effective communication. If you have such guidelines in place, we kindly request that you share them with us. This will greatly assist us as we embark on the process of developing our own messaging policies and strategies for Impact. Your valuable input will help us shape our approach and ensure a positive user experience.

[John_Lowe]

I know that Eric Silva at University of Texas in San Antonio has recently given a short presentation about this topic.  Is anyone else willing to share their personal experiences with creating some messaging guidelines or policies related to Impact?

[mmoore1]

We are new users of Impact at Ventura College. We have been using the messaging system judiciously with a lot of input from the Instructional Designers as a way to create "Just In Time" messaging for the user.  Currently this is not available to administrators or faculty as we don't think it is a way or should supercede announcements.  We can see a use where faculty might need some special messaging as they are implementing third party tools and may need some help for the student.  I think targeting your messages as help messages is the best way to think about it.  Yes, it can get busy for sure.  There are also data gathering tools and monitoring that we are starting to explore and implement. 

[mmoore1]

Yes, this sounds like an important process to create guidelines in it usage. 

[rpsloan]

We've talked with Eric and Rocio too and that helped us start our onboarding and pilot. 😊 We now have Impact as a permanent tool and continually using it for communication within Canvas. These are some of our "checklist" for creating our guideline.

• Creation and management of campaigns/messages should be just the Canvas admins, and not allow subaccount admins to have access to the Impact admin dashboard.
• What message types would be allowed?
• Canvas-related messaging only or work with other departments for their messaging needs?
  • Which departments can we work with so requests are just not open to everyone
• What should be the duration policy for messages?
• Keep messages text only or allow media?
• Allow X days of break after each campaign to avoid user fatigue

I'll be presenting our experience with managing and guideline creation with Impact in InstructureCon, but I'd be happy to meet via Zoom and I can share what we have.

[mmoore1]

Good Ideas

[FSUKevinKennedy]

In regards to timing, our general strategy is to specify targets (audience, context, dates) as much as possible to avoid creating too much noise.

We have an ongoing calendar for planned messaging, and also roll out "just in time" messaging when needed. Still, the goal is not to have multiple messages targeting the same user simultaneously, and ideally with downtime of at least a week between larger (systray/dashboard) messaging.

Right now, I'm working on making some very context-specific messaging and walkthroughs that may remain active since they involve processes that are used less often.