Users could be subscribed to a newsletter of a configurable frequency (weekly, monthly, etc) with new classes/workshop updates

Hello EXCO organizers,

    Since we are the Experimental College of the Twin Cities,
let's try a new EXPERIMENT to get more people coming to the EXCO website.  

    Why not try a Google Group exclusively for announcing NEW CLASSES?

    It might be called EXCO-NEW.
These words would appear on the list in the inbox of each subscriber.

    Subscribers would manage their own subscriptions:
putting themselves on the list and taking themselves off
(if and when they no longer want to know about new EXCO classes).

    Here are the basic principles I would suggest for this electronic message service:

1. NO SPAM.
 
   This means that no repeated information would ever appear.
This list would be exclusively for announcing NEW CLASSES.
(At the end of the list of new classes would be the link to the EXCO website,
where all administrative matters will be placed in the background.)

2. NEW CLASSES WOULD BE NOTED WHEN POSTED ON THE EXCO WEBSITE.

    This will encourage facilitators to submit their courses as early as possible,
instead of waiting for deadlines. 
And it would give advance planners several months of exposure 
before the classes actually begin.

3. NEW CLASSES WOULD BE NOTED IN THE WEEK BEFORE THEY BEGIN.

    The second time any class would appear on this EXCO-NEW service
would be in the week just before the first meeting. 
(If EXCO-NEW appears every two weeks or only once a month, 
all the classes beginning in the upcoming period would be listed.)

4. EACH NEW CLASS WOULD BE LISTED ONLY BY TITLE.
 
   And each title would be linked to the complete course description on the EXCO website.
This will allow subscribers to review quickly all of the new offerings
and then click for more information as they are interested. 
This will also keep each (perhaps weekly) message very brief.
Subscribers will be able to scroll thru the new classes very quickly.

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ADVANTAGES OF THIS NEW SERVICE

    People will only receive the information when they are ready for it
---when they open their e-mail.
And they can read or ignore the messages as they please.
No intrusion on their time or privacy. 

    Facilitators will be encouraged to send in their descriptions early
in order to get noticed by these EXCO-NEW subscribers. 
(Classes could be listed immediately as they are submitted if there is no budget request.
Classes that require funding will have to wait for the next budget committee meeting.)
Having several additional weeks or months on the EXCO website
will help to gather more participants.
Tracking shows that people are looking at the EXCO website every day.
Let's give them lots of interesting classes to consider whenever they visit. 

    The EXCO website could invite people to put their names and e-mail addresses
on this list at any time. 

    This new service would help to keep EXCO moving ahead between terms.
In fact, the three-term system might gradually disappear.
New classes could start any time.
And those who prefer to have their classes follow the Mac and U/M schedules
could still decide to schedule their classes accordingly. 

    When a subscriber decides to click for more details about an interesting class,
he or she is then on the EXCO website,
where he or she might decide to explore other classes listed.  

COSTS

    Because Google Groups are free,
there would be no cost for creating and sustaining this service.
The only cost would be human time needed to 
assemble the appropriate information,
create the links, and send the message. 

HOW OFTEN?

    This proposal suggests as often as once a week,
probably just before the beginning of the week-end,
perhaps Friday night or Saturday morning. 

    But some weeks there would not be enough new classes to announce.
So if no new classes are beginning that week,
the EXCO-NEW service would have no message that week. 

    The messages should not come more often than once per week. 
Subscribers would be reminded that EXCO exists once a week.
But they would not be bothered by a new message for each and every class. 

    Or perhaps at the beginning, the messages should be monthly.
This would mean announcing all of the classes submitted since the previous month
and all of the classes beginning that month.
One disadvantage of monthly publication
is that too many classes might appear in February, June, and October.
It would be best for these small reminders 
to have only a dozen or so new classes listed in each issue. 
Perhaps EXCO-NEW would appear in our inboxes 
once a week at the start of a new term
and only once a month in slow times. 

WHO SHOULD CREATE EACH MESSAGE (monthly or more frequently)?

    The most obvious person is the webmaster for EXCO,
who knows that classes have been submitted,
what classes have been approved (when approval is needed for funding),
and what classes will begin in the week or month just ahead. 

    But perhaps someone else with all of this information 
could put together the message for EXCO-NEW.

EXPERIMENTS CAN FAIL.

    This experiment in communicating with people interested in new EXCO classes
would be deemed a failure if only a few people sign up to receive information about new classes.
What should be set as the threshold of success/failure?

    Success would be thousands of people signed up to receive information
whenever a new EXCO class is listed or begins to meet. 

    We will not know whether such a service would work until we try it.
There is very little to lose and potentially much to gain. 
Why not try this experiment?

Yours,
James Park, EXCO facilitator