Using technology in college admissions

Every year Tessa McSwain communicates with thousands of prospective students at the University of Colorado Boulder. Finding a personal and efficient way to communicate with so many applicants is a never-ending challenge. As an assistant director for communication and marketing in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions she accepts that challenge with enthusiasm.

During the 2013 admissions cycle, Tessa had brand new knowledge and skills from her first year in the MATC that she leveraged to spearhead a new initiative. Armed with the human-computer interaction concepts she learned in JOMC 715: New Media and Society, Tessa was prepared to advocate for and launch a live chat program. The admissions office in partnership with Colorado startup LiveAcademic launches the MyCUBoulder chat platform, which allows CU-Boulder to host group chats for applicants to ask individual questions throughout the application process and get instant answers from CU-Boulder admissions representatives.

"Chat room technology is not new, but what it offers in this situation is a reliable platform for communicating one-on-one with anxious students,” Tessa says. “We are starting to see more and more video conferencing like Google Hangouts and Adobe Connect, but with new technology often comes a learning curve and some frustration. The admissions process is already stressful, so I wanted to make sure that the technology we used for this program would be reliable and intuitive. During our last chat event we had more than 200 students log in to ask questions and connect with our staff."

Tessa and her team plan to measure results of the live chat program by tracking how many participants complete applications, and eventually confirm enrollment at the University.

The Chronicle of Higher Education covered Tessa and her team’s experiment with using technology in college admissions in an article earlier this year: “Chatting One-on-One with 20,000 Applicants?” Check it out here.