RESEARCH

Communication is key to the success of any organization in the best of times and it is crucial in a time of a crisis. On March 6, 2020, the New York Times published an article announcing that the University of Washington was transitioning to remote instruction for all of its 50,000 students in order to minimal large gatherings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The country then saw school after school moving the almost 20 million college and university students in the U.S. to online learning. 

The target of the project my research team and I are undertaking is to evaluate campus communication in times of crisis in order to help inform campus administrators of best practices in future communication. So far, we have collected emails from an array of U.S. campuses that were sent to their campus communities that concern new protocols and decisions involving student life which the pandemic had impacted. We have coded for a number of data points, some of which include date sent, desired audience, demographics and statistics of the institute, gender of the sender, the content of the message, and readability.

The results we have analyzed to date address language access, variety in diction ethos, readability, and topic inclusion. In the messages that we have collected so far, there has not been a single resource or tool for understanding these messages in a different language. This causes cultural taxation on not only individuals who need to translate this important information sent in these messaging to other individuals in their life such as parents or family members, but also to those who need the information themselves. We have seen a drastic difference in the tone of messaging based on the gender of the sender, particularly between the different presidents in the California State University system. Readability, determined using the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test, has been inconsistent across the board, and rarely even averaging the desired reading level of 7th grade, which is customary in crisis communication. We are beginning to analyze the comparison of the timeline of these messages, as well as the decision to either send many emails with few topics per email against schools that chose fewer emails but with more topics. 

We have also begun creating a survey which we are planning to send out in the spring. With our final aim to be to offer policy recommendations on crisis communication to universities, we want to take into account public opinion and preference before we release university-specific critique. We have already begun presenting our preliminary results and have been met with interest and encouragement to continue our research, even from university administrators. Once we have the funds to distribute the survey and time to analyze our results, we will begin writing our paper and submitting it to journals for review. 
The research and work we are doing aims to ensure future communication in higher education is more inclusive, diverse, and easily accessible.