While alumni ranked in-person meetings and scheduled appointments highest, current students increasingly preferred meeting digitally or communicating via email, suggesting a shifting preference towards digital communication.
Image Source: Wellesley Archives
As we propose, the digital communication tools used in Wellesley academia can have a direct impact on the student and faculty experience– namely, the degree to which faculty and students can develop meaningful relationships. In the ethos of the Wellesley experience, we want to prioritize ways of better connecting our communities, both students and faculty alike. Tracing experiences with digital communication at Wellesley over the past 35 years will reveal patterns in how technology has facilitated or impeded genuine connections within our community.
We began by exploring Wellesley’s Digital Archives, class yearbooks, and blog posts from former students and faculty. Our focus was on identifying individuals involved in digital communication, cataloging communication methods—both digital and analog—and noting any relevant dates to construct our timeline.
We surveyed 11 professors (5 STEM, 6 Humanities), 37 alumni, and 53 students. We made active efforts to reach alumni and professors who were at Wellesley at different times across the 35 years of digital communication at Wellesley. Additionally, we interviewed four alumni and staff that we identified in our preliminary research.
In surveys, our focus was on the types of digital communication tools used by students, professors, and alumni, the ease of student-professor communication, and the closeness of their relationships. In interviews, we explored the role specific communication tools played and the culture surrounding their use.
We used interviews to complement the quantitative data from surveys, which provided a broader picture. Surveying and interviewing members of our own community helped in constructing our timeline and identifying communication features that effectively served the Wellesley community.
While alumni ranked in-person meetings and scheduled appointments highest, current students increasingly preferred meeting digitally or communicating via email, suggesting a shifting preference towards digital communication.
While 30.6% of alumni found communicating with professors difficult (Fig.1.), only 7.5% of current students found communicating with professors difficult.
Students in 2023 onwards use several digital communication platforms (Fig.2.), meaning that some fragmentation in communication is present that could have an adverse effect on professor-student relationships.
While all alumni% were close with at least one professor, there are 15.1% of current students that are not close with any professors.
In presenting our findings to the College’s leadership, we emphasize that the fragmentation of digital communication spaces has directly impacted students and professors' ability to connect with each other. While communication with professors has become more accessible through the increase in available tools, students are engaging with them less in meaningful ways and are less likely to develop close relationships with their professors. The decentralization of communication, moving away from centralized platforms like FirstClass and Sallie to a variety of social and academic tools, has led to a separation between students' social and academic communities. Alumni have shared that they cherished the sense of connection provided by centralized platforms, but the increasing fragmentation of social media spaces makes it more difficult for students to develop a central online community. This fragmentation diminishes the chances of forming meaningful relationships.
We believe that the College should focus on fostering personal communication between students and faculty, such as through events like teas, dinners, and other in-person interactions, instead of relying on impersonal digital communication methods. In doing so, we can create opportunities for deeper, more meaningful interactions that allow students and faculty to connect on a personal level. These face-to-face interactions not only help bridge the gap created by the fragmentation of digital spaces but also to connect back to the essence of the Wellesley College experience– cultivating close, dynamic academic environments.