Help! Keeping track of college feedback.
 

Please bear with me. :)

Osem Jnr # 2 is now away at college all week and we're going to need some practical way of communicating with the staff there on a regular basis - several times a week I would imagine. Previously, when he was at school, we always used a contact book in which daily feedback was exchanged with the school's staff and any important events could be very easily highlighted by us to make them easy to find in the future. Although a bit long-winded at times, we found this to be very useful as it gave us a handy reference to refer back to when necessary. Bear in mind that sadly Junior # 2 can't give us his own feedback so we need to know, pass on and be able to access as much relevant information as possible on his behalf. We may have this option now but the situation's more complicated because there are 2 sets of staff to liaise with, the educational and residential staff, so maintaining separate contact books could become quite onerous and even confusing.

The alternative would be to use email which would have some advantages but would mean, I'm assuming, that we'd simply wind up with a vast number of email messages to wade through every time we wanted to look back at anything we didn't have a specific date for and couldn't easily highlight.

I know email messages can now be handled/accessed as conversations but is there a physical limit to the conversation size? If we were to go down the email route is there any easy way to save/mark/label messages to make going back through them to find something at a later date easier than simply having to read the whole lot?

I'm hoping I'm missing something really obvious and that some highly organised person out there can suggest a way to combine the benefits of a written contact book with the benefits of using email, without necessarily having to print every email and physically annotate it after the event. I suppose putting all the college messages in one folder would be a good start but we'd still just be left with either a huge conversation comprising many messages or a large number of single emails we have no way of annotating or labelling.

I hope I've set out the problem clearly because we'd really like to wind up with a detailed record of his time at college which we can look back on and easily refer to in the future.

TIA as always.

Ps if someone feels this thread would be better elsewhere, please move it. TVM

Re: Help! Keeping track of college feedback.
 

Our twins' colleges refused point blank to provide feedback to parents, citing "data protection" and "personal information security".

I think they actually meant "we can't be arsed"....

When our son started bunking-off after threats from islamist students, we were unaware for weeks!

Re: Help! Keeping track of college feedback.
 

DPA is relevant - Osem Jnr #2 will have to give Student Admin Services (or the College equivalent) permission for them release information.

However, back to your OP - talk to the College Student Admin Systems staff, and explain your concerns (after OJ2 has given permission), and you will probably find they already have a process/system in place, as he won't be the first student in this situation.

If they don't, offer to work with them to agree something that could be the basis of a process, focusing on the benefits to them under the Equality & Diversity part of their remit, and how it could aid student retention.

Re: Help! Keeping track of college feedback.
 

Hi,

Just to clarify, the college are happy to exchange information with us and indeed have relied upon us giving them all the relevant information to enable them to assess him as eligible for the placement in the first place and obviously his wellbeing in his new environment. We've already exchanged emails with them about him but are just concerned that this might all become quite cumbersome to manage.

Re: Help! Keeping track of college feedback.
 

Hi Osem, I have a similar problem and am managing it using my Google mail account.

<long winded explanation>

I directed all my mail from different accounts to a gmail account then I simply set up a main folder with lots of separate folders within it so that the emails are stored in date order under various other subcategories. The beauty of this for me is that if an email covers more than one issue I can store it under more than one heading.

For example I have a main Health folder within which I have folders for Hospital appointments, Consultant results, Drug Trials, GP referrals .... the list seems endless and I even have folders within these sub folders

One email in my Health Folder regarding my drug trial results is listed under Consultant, drugs, appointments and also in a folder that I have for pending issues.

It may sound a tad anal but I can usually lay my hands on any email within a couple of minutes and with them automatically being stored in date order means I can see the time line of any subject very easily.

Hugs to the Osem family who all seem to be thriving, Jo.

Re: Help! Keeping track of college feedback.
 

I reckon that might work Jo and we could always periodically print the more important emails containing information we know we'll need to access in the future.

:)

Re: Help! Keeping track of college feedback.
 

With Google you can set up addresses like osem+college@gmail.com so you can filter easily on these to a folder. So maybe you can setup
osem+college@gmail - normal correspondence
osem+collegeproblem@gmail - issues that need dealing with - share this address with those you work with on problems

Re: Help! Keeping track of college feedback.
 

Another good suggestion I'll look into. Cheers.