Powered By Blogger

Friday, December 3, 2010

Website Lends and Ear to Student Woes- Then Reports Trends to Schools

Liz Exo’s Blog Post:

Currently working for 10 college campuses across the nation, Sill is a website where students can submit their personal problem and concerns, where they will be received and replied to by trained student supporters on campus.
The article discusses the benefits of this website; colleges can finally find out the real problems that students are facing- the problems that they don’t know who to talk to about. Allstop, creator of Spill, says that colleges can use this information to help with their campus’s “student retention, risk mitigation, and suicide prevention.”

The responses to the anonymous Spill posts are written by trained students. Each post has 4 to 6 responses, giving different perspectives on the issue and hopefully gets the poster more engaged.

I personally think this is a great tool that will help the college or university become more in sync with their student body. Allstop says that only “15 to 20% of students feel comfortable talking face to face with a school counselor,” so I think that Spill would be a great asset to those students that need help but are too embarrassed or shy to talk to someone in person. I see this as a great use of technology in the educational field.