There are changes being made to the DMACC Daily, which has been around for close to 30 years, keeping students, faculty, and staff up-to-date about what’s going on at the school.
The DMACC Daily used to be a daily email to staff, faculty, and students to notify them of upcoming events and other news on campus.
In December, the emails were discontinued. They are being replaced by the new SharePoint system accessed via the my.dmacc.edu portal, which DMACC officials say will be more individualized.
Todd Jones, director of marketing and public relations at DMACC, said, “The DMACC Daily was taken down in December to remove the DMACC D’s.” This stems from an ongoing lawsuit with Drake over the “D” school logo.
He also said the DMACC Daily was on an old SharePoint system, and while they took it down, they moved it to a different and newer operating system. They made this change over winter break to not disrupt any DMACC Daily users and saw it as the perfect chance to make the move.
DMACC Website Coordinator Noah O’Toole said, “The DMACC Daily ran on a version of SharePoint that Microsoft stopped supporting. That was one of the catalysts for us to redo the website and some services. […] Winter break was a good time when everything calmed down a little bit so that’s when we chose to stop the old DMACC Daily and transition into the new server.”
As the change is being implemented, some students and professors on campus feel a little in the dark about what’s going on around campus.
Rohwen Smith, majoring in Cybersecurity, from Polk City said, “It can be hard finding news or announcements. I usually just walk around Building 5 and look for the signs they put up.”
Smith said he had no clue that the Daily was shut down over winter break and he hadn’t even heard about it until it was mentioned in class by a teacher. He doesn’t follow any social media accounts, but he said he plans to check out the new Daily.
First-semester student AJ Crowover, majoring in Business Analytics and Finance, said he had never heard of the DMACC Daily before but he rarely looks for announcements as he usually keeps to himself and “does his own thing.” Crowover said he follows the main DMACC general account on Instagram.
Kylie Vazuez, from Ankeny and majoring in Dental Hygiene, said she used to get the daily emails but has not seen them recently and had no clue that they had shut down. She said sometimes it can be difficult finding announcements around campus. She follows DMACC on Snapchat, but said she almost never looks at it. Her mom encouraged her to join the DMACC community on Snapchat, but she said she rarely checks any activity on the app. Vazuez plans to possibly check out the new Daily.
O’Toole also said emails are not going to be sent out like they used to as the new version updates daily in real time, and you can check it anytime you wish.
O’Toole said that the DMACC Daily is more of a self-serve application and staff or faculty can submit their posts and it will automatically upload to SharePoint. He said they are making it easier for everyone involved and more user-friendly.
Jones said, “The DMACC Daily used to be very time intensive because the public relations person wrote all the stories and submitted them. We have been looking for a solution that would push this out across the college and make it more self-serve, like Noah said. We think we have got there and it is easily accessible on MyDMACC and is a great product, but just frees us up to do more traditional public relations activities”.
O’Toole said that he hasn’t heard any feedback from anyone as it took a while to migrate over to the new system for the new DMACC Daily. He hopes to get an announcement out soon and make sure everyone is aware of the new changes and that it is back up and running.
Jones adds that there have been some announcements that the Daily was down from student services. When the Daily was down, there was an email to faculty, staff, and students as a backup plan.
DMACC Social Media Specialist Susan Cruz-Rodriguez said DMACC has many social media accounts for students to follow to keep up to date. Most of the district-wide ones are on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
She said, “There is a lot for prospective students, alumni, community partnerships, staff pride points and milestones [to find]. But anything internally that students would want to know of, like what’s going on in Building 5, I highly suggest following campus-specific platforms.”
The DMACC Ankeny campus is a bit bigger than the other campuses and has many social media platforms that students can follow, including the DMACC Intramurals account @dmaccintramurals, the DMACC student activities council @dmaccsacankeny on Instagram, and their Facebook account as well. Most of these campus-specific accounts will help give students a rundown on what is upcoming at the campus. The big platforms are usually dmacc_bears for just DMACC information in general, not specific to just the Ankeny campus.
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