Members of our team communicate internally via a Google Group. We sometimes encounter issues with not enough people reading/responding to posts or emails in our group. I’ve seen this and this, but with a majority of the team neglecting to communicate, we need some help.
How does your team make sure that people fill out forms, respond to questions, contribute to discussions, etc. on time?
I send out weekly newsletters that contain all the information they need to know. However, people have told me that they rarely like to read them. To solve this problem we tell students information at weekly team meetings (every Tuesday afternoon) and then later put the actual forms in and links in the newsletter (sent every Tuesday night). This back-to-back communication system works pretty well to keep all 90+ team member up to date.
However, despite all my efforts, students will always forget or procrastinate things, so we’ve just learned to not care if a student doesn’t fill out some forms (like sweatshirt orders) or misses the opportunity to contribute to a discussion; their loss.
Hope that helps!
If you just want to get announcements out, make a private facebook group. Those that refuse to use facebook are probably on top of their email.
^This. Except for our team, the ones who don’t use Facebook we usually call or text to get information out.
Our school requires students to check their email at least twice a day, so we just use a listserve with everyone on it. Really important stuff is discussed at the weekly team meeting, as well.
Skunkworks uses http://groupspaces.com/ to manage email lists. There is a cost, but we like the tool better than Google Groups. Each sub team has its own list. Other tips include: keep it short, make fun, & copy the parents.
To maximize impact, send fewer well organized emails. Groupspaces creates a table of contents of the topics covered to allow team members to scan for those that they are interested in. Use clear titles, and bullet the who, what, where, when at the top of a topic. You can include narrative but understand you will loose most of your audience for that part.
We include a list of links to fun articles about robots and technology at the bottom of emails. We also from time to time include instructions in an email on how to be included in a drawing for a $20 Starbucks card. At the start of the meeting award the winner and thank all the people who entered.
Copy parents on most emails. All parents are on the “student” list. We also have a “parents only” list for rare communications that require it. Student’s hear most important items in the meeting and parents see it in the email.
We have a Facebook group and a Twitter in addition to an email list, so we get almost everybody that way. Individual people can ask to be called or texted information, but because that gets to be a lot of information we only do that for the people that ask. If someone doesn’t respond or show up for a while, we try to get in touch by emailing and calling them, and if they don’t answer after that we cut ties.
People on my team generally answer, but it’s also a good indicator of who’s staying on top of things and who’s the most active in the group. Often we end up badgering the same people, and they are usually the same people that will come late, or not show up for a while.
We use remind 101
It works well to get messages out.
Via Text and Email