When Microsoft decided to switch all live.edu email addresses over to its new Office 365 program, Chuck Lanham said the University of Idaho was required to make the switch as well.
Lanham, UI information technology services assistant director, said the issue did not lie in the actual switchover, but in the
execution and students’ interpretation.
ASUI President Hannah Davis said ITS asked her when she thought making the switch would work best for students. She agreed after reading the instructions, Winter Break would be the best option.
“I thought, ‘It seems pretty simple,’ but I received several emails not as ASUI president but as president of Delta Gamma asking how to do it,” Davis said. “I’m not going to lie, I read the first one (email) and deleted the rest, but when it came time to do it I read the instructions and it was pretty simple.”
Lanham said while early on there were some issues with Microsoft itself, the biggest issue was students not reading and following the instructions.
“If I could answer (why students don’t read their email), I’d be a millionaire,” Lanham said. “It’s not just getting our students to read this email, it’s getting anyone to read any email or follow any instructions. I think in general people don’t tend to worry about reading things unless they can’t think it through.”
He compared the
situation to using a new coffee maker. He said most people will start pushing buttons before taking out the instructions and learning how to actually set up their machine.
“We know when we send it out people won’t read it, so we try to make it as short as possible, as informative as possible using keywords to catch people’s attention,” Lanham said.
Davis said this issue occurs with ASUI emails as well.
“I think it’s our generation. We’ve become immune to junk email and commercials. It’s kind of become white noise,” Davis said. “It’s about building good habits to read these emails.”
She said it is most frustrating when people say they don’t know about something when it was discussed in an email that had been sent out. She said they send emails and hang posters to inform students, but doesn’t know what else to do to get students to be informed.
“We do as much as we can do aside from going into someone’s dorm room and telling them this is happening,” Davis said. “I think it’s the responsibility of the person to sit down and take 20 seconds to read this and get informed. I don’t want to generalize our generation but it is definitely frustrating, especially with the upgrade.”
Lanham said once students read the instructions and were able to reset their passwords, the system works. But many had issues with bookmarks and cookies.
“The biggest problem was a lot of students bookmarked the Microsoft site that they try to go to instead of following our instructions and that site is not what ITS had told them to go to. If you try to login it won’t work there,” Lanham said.
He said students who have reset their passwords but still are having issues logging in need to delete their bookmark and resave it using the new login site.
“Once the migration was complete, email was always available,” Lanham said. “It was just that complication getting in the first time.”
He said there has been a table set up outside ITS in the Idaho Commons to help students who are still having issues accessing their email.
The last issue he said students need to be aware of is using their email on devices aside from their computers.
“Many change their password on the laptop but forget about their phone. Smartphones will keep trying the old password and lock out after a number of tries. I’ve been hearing five (minutes),” Lanham said. “If it does lockout there’s a 15 minute wait to try again.”
Katy Sword can be reached at [email protected]