Emergency Notification and the Protected Learning Environment

The one area where the interests of education, innovation, and safety collide is in the university classroom. It is the heart of education, the core location where teachers and students engage in the symbiotic transfer of knowledge. Classrooms are single-purpose rooms dedicated to learning. The focus of the room is fixated on the teacher and the teaching experience. The classroom is as well where you have anywhere from 10 to 100 or more people isolated from the outside world in a room with doors you cannot lock to keep danger out. In the eyes of campus safety experts, it is the perfect setting for a potentially bad situation.

As it always has been, chewing gum, passing notes, and cheating are on the whole the worst offenses of classroom culture. Nevertheless they are joined today by a relative newcomer: using a cell phone. The reasons that cell phones have become "innovation non grata" run the gamut, from class disruption to cheating, sexting, texting, and coordinating fights. According to the National Association of School Resource Officers, 81 percent of K-12 schools do not allow use of cell phones in school. Sixteen states have gone so far as to pass laws against cell phone use in K-12 schools. In Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C., and across the country, K-12 schools have banned the use of cell phones while school hours.

The same culture applies to the classroom experience in higher education. On college campuses, professors have taken an especially hard line against the use of cell phones and laptops because of the disruptions caused by calling and texting and surfing the Internet. Most classrooms have signs posted prohibiting use of cell phones, and many professors include similar language in the class syllabus. A National Education Association survey shows that 85 percent of professors on college campuses support banning cell phones in their classrooms.

"I don't want students to have phones out while class," said Emily Drill, an adjunct lecturer in neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh and Allegheny College. "I make it a policy for phones to be turned off in the classroom." Drill said that even with her own policy in place, typically one or two students per class for all that try to text or answer calls. "I tell them to put it away, and that as a rule works."

Drill's simple request to "put it away" is one of the less-extreme examples of how professors discourage cell phone use in class. One professor's policy involves the use of a pop quiz every time a cell phone rings, and another professor counts it as an unexcused absence if a student leaves class to answer a call. Some professors confiscate phones; others add time to the end of class to make up for disruptions, and some will deduct points from final grades. To see the battle in action, you can watch students' phones get smashed and destroyed by professors on YouTube.

Nationally, on average, only 40-50 percent of students opt into a school's calling program. In a classroom of 25, that equates to 10 to 12 students covered by the calling system. If 75 percent of them have their phones turned off in class, at the time only about two to three students in the room would be able to receive a message pushed out through the school's cell phone/text message ENS. Given that the calling system cannot assign priority to or target the classroom, it may be 30 minutes or more earlier a message appears on one of those phones. Fewer students bring laptop computers to class, nevertheless the same logic applies.

The classroom setting must be made

"Emergency notifications in the classroom setting must be made by more effective tools than e-mail, text messages, or web pages. Two-way communication systems, radio receivers, digital signage, or VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phones provide the most rapid means for emergency notification," said Dennis Sullivan, assistant EHS director and emergency manager at the University of Louisville.

"I think that someone would have to personally come to the classroom if we had an emergency scenario," Drill speculated. She said that during students are familiar with fire alarm drills, experience with other emergency evacuation events is minimal. As well, because she asks students to turn off their phones, her phone is as well turned off, she said.

IP End Points Get the Job Done The most effective means of alerting a classroom is to use a precision notification system that has dedicated, networked alerting devices inside the room. These may be proprietary alerting devices or VOIP phones. A precision notification system targets alerting devices by location and uses network infrastructure independent of consumer communications networks. The advantage is that these systems are capable of sending messages to one or all classrooms without alerting the entire campus population. It is a faster, more accurate way to deliver a warning.

One advantage of these devices is that they display text and provide audio information to everyone, including the professor, who is the appropriate authority to direct the class while an emergency. Additionally, these systems are activated only while an emergency and remove any reason for people to keep their cell phones or laptops active while class.

Sullivan indicated that at University of Louisville, emergency notification systems and academic endeavors have attempted to coexist without impacting each other adversely. The university has responded by placing VOIP phones in all of the classrooms. The phones are set to dial the university police if the receiver is picked up, nevertheless more importantly, the phones allow for emergency messages to be communicated in the classrooms using a text screen, audio, and flashing light. "While a recent tornado warning, every classroom was provided timely warning that was faster than text messages, e-mails, or our web page," Sullivan explained. "This system is not for everyone and would be in the extreme costly unless you already have converted the university from analog phones to digital phones."

Microphone at the panel

Newer fire alarm systems support live voice using a microphone at the panel, however you have to physically be in the building and have keys to the fire panel to operate it. All of these steps waste precious time. As well, most university campuses have a variety of fire alarms system installed over multiple decades, so not every building will have this capability.