Editor's Note: This article is the first in a series of three articles by R. J. Multari on the subject of technology in advising. The second article, Integrating Technology into Advisement Services, was published in The Mentor on May 26, 2004. The third article, The Economics of Technology in Advisement Services, was published on August 26, 2004.

In recent years, the administration of academic advisement has undergone radical transformation as technological developments have altered the processes by which information is collected, stored, and accessed; the systems by which communication is enabled; and the structures by which transactions are conducted. Each technological innovation has challenged advising administrators to contemplate and implement alternative forms of services to students and the many other groups supported by colleges and universities. The changing landscape created by this technological revolution has provoked new ways of thinking about the delivery of services typically found in a college's advising services portfolio. The challenge to manage and support students has taken on new meaning “in light of relational and networked databases, prolific and assertive e-mails ... Internet technology and other World Wide Web-based transactions, [as well as] information dissemination and on-line query servers” (Moneta, 1997, p. 5). The intersection of technology with shifting missions for student recruitment and retention professionals requires significant changes in the management of academic advisement.

Senior enrollment services officers can no longer rely on traditional forms of advisement, service delivery, or retention. Historical practices within advising services have little place in a technologically driven, customer service-oriented environment in which face-to-face services may be replaced with computer screens and voice mail. The contemporary delivery of academic advisement will be increasingly in the form of distant and virtual contacts, less restrained by office hours and staff availability. Technological and consumer-influenced changes call for modification in both the forms and functions of academic advisement delivery. According to Moneta (1997), these shifts “further necessitate changes in management principles and methodologies that guide student affairs, and further require that student affairs administrators understand the factors underlying these challenges as well as the implications of applying technological developments to student affairs and its functions” (p. 6).

Technological changes are both the result of, and stimulus for, alternative management practices. Several factors will determine the role that technology will play in the management of advising services. For example, the submission of a paper transcript to a college or university will soon be a relic of past practices, as online applications and electronic submission processes become the norm. Scanning devices will prescreen and categorize the applications, according to predefined institutional criteria. In the near future, the first time a human being looks at an academic degree audit may be after an initial batch of “red flags” have been identified. Likewise, electronic submission of college transcripts will enable direct entry of student information into the campus records system, without need for data-entry personnel. In theory, the outcome will be fewer staff, quicker response, lower cost, diminished errors, and instant access to academic information.

Throughout advising services, as with many other administrative units on postsecondary campuses, managers are expected to do more with less, and technological solutions have emerged as the perceived answer for concerns about productivity and cost. However, the benefits of replacing advising and advising-support personnel with technology to enhance productivity and reduce overall costs have not yet materialized. In a human-resource environment like academic advisement, the qualities associated with human assistance make it difficult to determine gains and losses when technological applications serve in lieu of personal contact.

Campuses are also engaged in an accelerated adaptation of various technologies, with particular focus on installation and use of networked and Internet-based services, state-of-the-art telephone applications, and in-house video broadcast capability. World Wide Web access methods now allow for user-directed applications and interventions. Students, for example, can now review their transcripts, degree audits, and billing status, all from the comfort of their rooms, as students do at the University at Buffalo. Advising services staff are faced with these evolving challenges. Often, these situations are prompted by institution-wide initiatives that leave advising units “little choice to adapt, regardless of cost, competency, and convenience” (Moneta, 1997, p. 7). In fact, conversion to uses of technology will inevitably increase efficiency and enhance user satisfaction, but the challenge will be to coordinate the pace and scope of technology in the human resources that compose the core of advising services.

Technological innovations have created an abundance of opportunities for new practices and enhanced services “frequently characterized as 'real-time,' 'student-centered,' and 'any time, any place'” (Moneta, 1997, p. 7). For example, instead of seeking extended hours for academic advising, students can submit e-mail inquires that are answered by peer, paraprofessional, or professional advisers, depending on the nature of the question and the level of expertise required. This electronic triage system was recently installed at the University at Buffalo with the creation of the Student Response Center. The UB Student Response Center—which comprises the customer service staffs from the former offices of Academic Advisement, Records and Registration, Student Financial Aid, Student Accounts, and Undergraduate Admissions—ensures that staffs are deployed where needed.

Likewise, current student-institution administrative transactions require innovative approaches and alternatives. Today's students are twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week customers who reject the disadvantages of traditional nine-to-five administrative practices. Technology provides extended access to information, interaction, and client-centered applications. Electronically, the campus has becomes a twenty-four-hour operation. Students, encumbered by classes, work, research, and other daytime obligations, are increasingly seeking access to academic support services at times most convenient to them. For undergraduates, in particular, the most convenient time is frequently well after midnight. At nonresidential institutions, such as Youngstown State University in Ohio, students seek remote access from home and work. They have become increasingly resistant to on-campus visits for seemingly trivial interaction with advising personnel and clerical service providers. Students have come to expect, and prefer, that inconvenient trips to the downtown YSU campus for student orientation, academic advisement, course registration, bill paying, and even library services be reduced.

The technological environments on many campuses are evolving rapidly and comprise numerous elements:

Technology-based information dissemination occurs through an ever-growing Web environment, CD-ROMs, automated phone response systems, and campus-managed listservs. On a networked campus, faculty and staff can enjoy instant and up-to-date access to student records. Fully integrated student information systems enable advisers to access admission profiles, academic records, demographic information, housing choices, and course selections stored in a single, universally accessible database, secured by password and authorization limits (Moneta, 1997).

Transactional interaction, defined by Moneta (1997) as “the conduct of a business activity as opposed to the simple transmission of information” (p. 8) has increased significantly with the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Web pages can provide extraordinary access to campus online services and can eliminate the need for costly, time-sensitive paper-based forms and applications. For example, students from two very different institutions—the University at Buffalo (New York State's premier public center for graduate and professional education, as well as the state's largest and most comprehensive public university) and Youngstown State University (an open-access institution in northern Ohio that offers a broad range of certificate, associate, baccalaureate, and graduate programs)—can take the following actions from their residence halls or off campus:

Every transactional activity has become a candidate for electronic interaction. As campuses are increasingly wired for high-speed Internet access, technology supporters identify more and more applications for conversion from office-centered services to technologically based student-centered services. At the University at Buffalo, transactions by phone remain popular and continue as a primary or backup process for advising questions, course registration, and grade inquiry. Likewise, at UB, the telephone remains a primary form of communication for students and academic and administrative departments, with auto-attendant systems replacing receptionists and phone operators.

No form of communication applications has had more impact on the college campus than e-mail. At many institutions, including the University at Buffalo, e-mail competes with the telephone as the first choice for person-to-person dialogue, and the volume of e-mail traffic has forced an increase in the institutional computing infrastructure. Electronic access to anyone with an e-mail address coupled with the mass communications capacities of distribution lists and electronic “carbon copies” have altered work patterns and protocols. The ongoing implications of e-mail communication within academic advisement are varied and complex.

Educational technology has advanced well beyond the days of the overhead projector and cassette player. Classrooms are being augmented with learning centers that feature full Internet access, computer workstations at every desk, “smart boards” that print and download instructor notes, and the latest in audio, video, and teleconferencing capacities. Faculty are creating class home pages with links to information, the course syllabus, class notes, homework assignments, and other course-supporting elements. The boundaries of the classroom disappear when discussions continue outside of class, enabled by course listservs and online discussion groups. With a bit of imagination, courseware can provide an endless number of applications for advising services, as evidenced here at the University at Buffalo (Anderson, 2002). These days, technological applications developed for one venue frequently migrate to another. For example, information dissemination applications become public relations instruments serving a variety of administrative functions, including communication, advisement, and retention (Moneta, 1997). These and many other technological advances are fundamentally changing the way colleges and universities operate. The implications for the management and delivery of advising services are significant, as new paradigms are created with technology serving as an ever-important cornerstone.