Advice to Baruch College

If I was hired by Baruch College to use new media to improve the college, I'd start by immediately looking into a couple of the school's flawed features. First, CUNY Blackboard either needs to be modified or replaced all together. While Blackboard is a great avenue through which professors can get a notice out to a large number of students, it is very much a one-to-many means of communication. Blackboard does have a discussion/comment feature, it is scarcely used, in my experience. The idea would be to either update the design of blackboard with the intention to highlight those features in order to encourage discussion among classmates, or to replace Blackboard with another platform that can allow professors to get announcements out to students while also functioning as a many-to-many means of communication. And secondly, I would change the appointments policy for student-help offices such as the Center for Academic Advisement, Registrar, and Bursar. While some things require a students physical presence to be processed, I would have a team whose sole purpose is to handle "online appointments." Being that Baruch is a commuter school, it is unreasonable to require students to make the trip to school and be physically present for something that may be able to be handled in just minutes over the internet (Blackboard or another program would be used for these online appointments).