New Jersey firm links students, professors through technology


“We like the fact that the instructor doesn’t need to leave the space that he or she feels comfortable with,” Haggerty said.

Such a system is becoming increasingly essential, Haggerty said, because if you need to get information to college students about coursework in a timely fashion, the best method “wouldn’t be to send them an eMail, and it wouldn’t be to ask them to log into a website.

“Our hope,” he said, “is that once they get the text of that tweet, … it will alert them that there’s something going on in their course and help remind them to go there and stay on top of their material.”

Doane, 37, said ConnectYard was originally inspired by a conversation he had with his wife, who was juggling a college course and motherhood, and was lamenting the fact that she couldn’t connect with other students as easily as she could connect with friends on Facebook.

They mentioned the problem to Warner, a friend of Doane’s from Cornell University, and he added that as a professor he was frustrated about how difficult it was to connect electronically with some students.

“It’s not uncommon for students to not log in [to eMail], but it is very common to see them logged in to Facebook or texting away on their mobile devices,” Warner said.

Doane said ConnectYard has not turned a profit yet, “but we’re working on it.”

Copyright (c) 2011, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.). Visit The Record online at www.NorthJersey.com. Distributed by MCT Information Services.

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