TeamBTE: Evolving Through Business on Miami University’s Regional Campuses
This paper presents a discussion of a Miami University branch campus organization known as TeamBTE. TeamBTE originated as a means of enhancing communications among students, faculty, staff, BTE program advisors, BTE alumni, and local business leaders associated with the two–year Business Technology (BTE) program. Operating on Miami University’s Middletown and Hamilton branch campuses, TeamBTE provides electronic communications in the form of bi–weekly electronic newsletters to all interested parties.
The basic premises behind establishing TeamBTE will be discussed. A series of typical TeamBTE campus activities, including guest speakers, fundraisers, and other similar activities, will illustrate the steps taken to build interest in the organization during its initial development. Thoughts on enhancing the departmental, campus, and community roles of TeamBTE in future years will also be presented.
Two–year post–secondary academic institutions are faced with the challenging task of determining how to attract students from a population pool that is becoming increasingly more diverse. Traditional students have not disappeared from campus. Lower in overall enrollment percentage, these traditional students have been joined by an increasing number of nontraditional students who view the process of obtaining a post–secondary degree in very different terms. These relative newcomers include students who work and have families while attending college. These individuals, therefore, have significantly restricted time schedules that make attending classes and interacting informally with faculty, peers, and others in the business community substantially difficult. The presence of many older, returning students and also students who may be looking for specific coursework based on personal interests rather than seeking a formal degree adds a final layer of complexity to a student population that is anything but traditional in composition.
This paper serves to explore the initial efforts of the two–year Business Technology (BTE) Department at Miami University to address one of the most pressing needs inherent in serving a diverse student population. Specifically, BTE needs to provide accurate, timely, and interest–building business communications to keep all stakeholders informed and involved in the learning process. The need for new methods of communicating with students and involving them in department activities is particularly acute due to the department’s ongoing efforts to refine its programs and attract a broader range of students. A new organization created within the BTE Department is working to actively engage students in the process of business outside of a traditional classroom setting.
The TeamBTE concept was developed as a means of engaging all stakeholders in the Business Technology program in a unified effort. Stakeholders include students, faculty, campus administrators, BTE program advisors, department staff, BTE alumni, and members of the local and regional business communities served by Miami University’s campuses in Middletown and Hamilton, Ohio. Even the subset of business community members was diverse, with representatives from for–profit businesses, nonprofit organizations, and governmental agencies all taking an interest in the BTE program. The name “TeamBTE” was coined to evoke a spirit of cooperation and active involvement among all stakeholders, many of whom rarely encountered each other through the pursuit of their normal daily responsibilities.
While TeamBTE’s primary mission is to foster communications, the original intent of developing the organization also included moving beyond communications to offer creative activities and innovative programs of interest to students and others involved in the BTE program. Activities may be classified according to three categories: general business communications, marketing communications, and service learning programs. Under general business communications, the primary activity at the present time is publication of TeamBTE’s bi–weekly electronic newsletter, E–BITS. Under marketing communications, TeamBTE members and BTE marketing students have been involved in a variety of projects, including the development of promotional videos and a TeamBTE pamphlet to help explain the short– and long–term goals of the organization. In a combined marketing communications and fund– raising effort, TeamBTE logo T–shirts have been designed and sold. Under service learning programs, a team of students has interviewed approximately forty BTE faculty members and written up the interviews as a BTE Department service learning project to provide better information on faculty members’ specialties and interests. In a service learning project designed to benefit BTE students across the entire campus, TeamBTE has also sponsored a student–developed E–mentoring program that will be initiated soon. Bridging all of these activities, TeamBTE’s Events Planning Team has worked hard to provide a series of fund–raising, academic, and social events to build a strong spirit of community among all stakeholders in the Miami University BTE program.
An organization such as TeamBTE has never existed before, either formally or informally, on the Miami University campuses. Ultimately, this orga nization will serve as an important driving force for the development of a more cohesive Business Technology program. TeamBTE was conceived during the summer of 2001. As the faculty advisor, I have been responsible for developing the organization charter for TeamBTE and the marketing strategy for its launch. Now, I am working with a core group of individuals to build stakeholder interest in the group.
TeamBTE is a new campus organization, operating primarily over the Internet, and designed to foster communications needed to define and enhance the future programs for Miami University’s BTE Department. To establish a succinct operating platform for TeamBTE, formal business and marketing plans were developed and a short slogan or byline was created to help people instantly recognize the purpose of the organization. The slogan “Evolving Through Business” has proven highly effective at clarifying the purpose of TeamBTE on and off campus.
TeamBTE’s Products and/or Services
The end product and service of TeamBTE is information which will ultimately come in a variety of forms but will be centralized around the organization’s biweekly electronic newsletter E–BITS. A typical example of the newsletter contains a message from the advisor, who also is the official editor of the newsletter, plus a variety of topics of potential interest to individuals associated with the BTE program. In an effort to keep the information fresh, topics are rotated in and out of the newsletter. For example, Volume I, Issue 2, contains a question–and–answer column on computer usage called “Technobytes” that is authored by BTE faculty member Rob Sommer. Sommer’s column encourages students to send in their computer questions to be answered online in an upcoming issue. This column alternates issues with a management and career development column by BTE department chairman Stan Spencer. Similar in format to “Technobytes,” Spencer’s column also asks for questions to be answered in future issues.
An electronic newsletter format was chosen because it is characteristic of the business communications used by contemporary practitioners. Up–front design work for the electronic newsletter was accomplished during Miami University’s 2001 Summer Session with assistance from several students in the BTE 105 Introduction to Marketing class. Database software selection was based on identifying a package that would allow personalized e–mail communications to be sent to a diverse group of campus and noncampus contacts in a fully automated mode. The requirement that all communications be personalized (i.e., addressed specifically to the recipients) precluded the use of already–available campus technologies such as the listserv functions available on the Miami University Qualcomm Eudora e–mail system or the bcc functions available on typical Microsoft or Netscape e–mail packages. At the same time, the software package selected needed to be fully compatible with Miami University’s e–mail and file server structure so that the University’s Internet access connections could be used for high–speed transfers of data.
GoldMine 5.0 ® from GoldMine Software, the selected product, fulfills all of the necessary requirements and is straightforward for students. Brainstorming discussions with the Summer BTE 105 class culminated in the database being designed to allow the selection of subgroups of newsletter recipients based on student/faculty/business community member status, present or former affiliation with the university, primary campus location, and several other parameters. The current TeamBTE database contains over 1,000 names of individuals associated with the BTE program on Miami University’s two branch campuses.
With the database in place, students involved in TeamBTE activities ranging from marketing to operations are now able to participate in a variety of individual and team–based projects designed to expose them to the power and versatility of electronic communications and the organizational objectives of TeamBTE. Students have explored sending out general announcements regarding TeamBTE along with the bi– weekly issues of the electronic newsletter. There is sufficient flexibility in the TeamBTE project to allow students to pursue specific aspects of electronic communications that may be of primary interest to them. For example, several students are concerned with developing the expertise to write text suitable for use in an electronic publication. (Such text often needs to be briefer and less complex than text to be read by more conventional means.) Other students are concerned with understanding how to effectively target desired subcategories of individuals in the database and in making efficient use of the flexibility of the software. A final group of students is tracking marketing research data on those who receive the electronic publications. These students will be responsible for collecting membership dues for TeamBTE and modifying the database to account for other inputs coming back from the newsletter readership.
Positioning of Products/Services
Subscriptions to the electronic newsletter of TeamBTE are free to anyone who desires to receive this publication. Once the costs of purchasing the software were covered, sending out incremental copies of the newsletter is essentially cost–free. TeamBTE leadership desired to make the information disseminated by the organization readily accessible to anyone in much the same manner as other campus publications but with two important differentiating factors. First, E–BITS is the only such publication to go out electronically to its membership and others on a regular basis. Second, E–BITS stands alone in terms of the breadth of coverage for off–campus individuals. The electronic communications made possible through TeamBTE make it possible to reach business owners and managers without incurring postage costs every other week, a funding issue that stops the broad circulation of nonelectronic newsletters from many campus organizations.
As noted by Scott Tillett (Tillett 49), this cost advantage and the freedom to operate that it brings are beginning to be recognized as the biggest side–benefits of using the Internet for electronic communications programs in education. Tillett notes that fancier is not necessarily better when it comes to the educational use of the Internet. Simple, easy–to– use sites and newsletters or other communications that download quickly and accurately are the most useful for delivering the information that is needed in an academic setting. Case studies available in the literature, including one bicultural study by Chadwick Hilton and Naoki Kameda, also support the same findings and document an added advantage to keeping electronic communications and Internet–related materials simple and straightforward: simpler materials are best for reaching people of diverse cultural backgrounds where language barriers may alter the interpretations of the materials used (Hilton and Kameda 181). The authors observe that interactions in international business in particular can benefit from a well–thought–out position on using electronic communications to augment coursework materials. Ultimately, one of TeamBTE’s long–term goals is to capture one–on–one business interactions on a global scale.
SWOT: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats Involving TeamBTE
Given that its primary strength is innovation in business communications, there are many opportunities for TeamBTE to assist Miami University’s BTE program in differentiating itself from its major competitors. On a biweekly basis, E–BITS is able to trumpet the latest information about the BTE Department and its programs to its primary stakeholders and potential customers through the local business community. The BTE program can excel not only in terms of the quality of coursework provided but also in terms of providing external opportunities for students to interact with members of the business communities surrounding Middletown and Hamilton. Program visibility is high, and business owners and managers are more likely to seek out assistance and interaction with the two branch campuses due to their unique local positioning as an integral part of each community. This is an opportunity that can be enhanced by careful planning and the execution of community–oriented programs at the two branch campuses. TeamBTE is a significant new tool that may be used to heighten awareness of BTE activities on campus and within the local business communities. Properly executed, TeamBTE’s electronic newsletter and the other online communications approaches to come will provide rapid links for asking questions, sending out information, and generally upgrading the familiarity of all parties with the BTE program.
TeamBTE has some inherent internal weaknesses and also faces some external threats. The primary weakness that could hinder the ongoing existence of TeamBTE is the lack of continuing interest in the group by students who are currently enrolled in the program. TeamBTE must appeal to these students, and it must offer something of value to them in order to be worth a portion of their hectic schedules. This means that TeamBTE must offer ways to increase job contacts, ways to determine what courses are most relevant to each student, ways to increase knowledge of business topics and practices not learned in class, and so forth. Threats to the BTE program, and thus TeamBTE, at Miami University include competing programs offered by other colleges and universities, plus reductions in enrollment and funding due to changes in the local and state economies. The key to addressing these threats is to look at the BTE program in terms of continuous improvement. It is mandatory for the faculty and staff to keep a critical eye not only on the competition but also internally on the scope and quality of the program. Innovation and relevance to current business needs will be critical over the coming years as the BTE program expands its influence within its market. TeamBTE has been instituted to act as the department’s eyes and ears to monitor change in today’s world of business.
Building Customer Loyalty—Online Community
Customer loyalty is a critically important concept for TeamBTE. This is an organization that functions based on developing close relationships with all of the stakeholders associated with the BTE program. As a communications vehicle, E–BITS, the electronic newsletter can only be effective if people find it of value and return to read it. This requires careful attention to customer loyalty and any concerns that may arise from the organization’s publications. In E–BITS, TeamBTE continuously attempts to solicit comments from the membership and also to provide opportunities for the membership to contribute to the newsletter. Opting out is easy to do, only an e–mail to the organization is needed, and the process was set up this way to give an early warning to TeamBTE if readers start to find the information to be of little use.
Customer loyalty will ultimately hinge on the content of TeamBTE’s programs and communications. If students find the organization useful when selecting courses or looking for a job, if faculty and administrators find the membership gives helpful guidance on new program directions, and if local business owners and managers find assistance in moving their own organizations forward, then TeamBTE loyalty will be maintained. It is a primary goal of the faculty advisor and the student officers of the organization to monitor the pulse of all activities closely so as to enhance customer loyalty whenever possible.
If functioning as intended, TeamBTE will be a significant driver in creating an online community for the BTE program where none existed before. Even in the earliest stages, TeamBTE received significant positive comments from new members who noted that something of this nature has been needed for a long time. Everyone working on the TeamBTE concept acknowledges that an online community can easily decay and die if the interaction between participants and the information transferred is not sufficient to maintain ongoing interest. The initial TeamBTE model predicts success, but the proof will be generated in the customer satisfaction numbers and the performance measurement indicators in the coming semesters.
Present Efforts and Next Steps
As stated previously, TeamBTE will thrive and be able to influence program directions and offerings within the BTE organization only to the extent that it engages the students, faculty, business owners, and other stakeholders in activities of value. Currently, TeamBTE is currently in an experimental or range–finding mode in which multiple types of activities are under investigation to determine which activities will add value, attract good participation, and become TeamBTE standards.
During the fall and spring semesters of the 2001–2002 academic year at Miami University, TeamBTE partnered with the students enrolled in a BTE 105 Introduction to Marketing class on the Middletown campus to develop and initiate seven new activities to increase interactions between BTE stakeholders on and off campus. These students were typically enrollees in the two–year BTE program at Miami University, although a few students were taking the class in conjunction with other degree programs or for personal interest. For virtually all of the students, this class was their first exposure to formal marketing principles. BTE 105 students were required to perform one major independent or team–based research project as part of their course requirements, and the collaborative work done with TeamBTE served to meet this project need. Specific projects conducted include the seven following items.
1. Event Planning: During the Fall Semester, a team of four Marketing students, and during the Spring Semester, a team of five marketing students elected to participate on the Events Planning Team. The mission of each team was to develop a series of events to be held over the course of the semester to build interactions between current and prospective TeamBTE members. Left to the discretion of the students, but with substantial faculty advice, the selection of events brought forward included fund–raisers, guest speakers, and social events. Each student team was responsible for organizing each event and conducting it under the TeamBTE banner for the benefit of anyone interested in learning more about TeamBTE. Of the events scheduled, the fund–raising activities involving Krispy Kreme ® doughnuts were undoubtedly the most popular. Other popular activities included hosting guest speakers from local businesses, most with stories to tell regarding entrepreneurial activities. The Events Planning Teams, utilizing a network of sales activities, also served as the funding agents for other TeamBTE activities across the semester. In total, the two Events Planning Teams raised nearly $2,500 over the academic year.
2. E–BITSNewsletter: The TeamBTE electronic newsletter, E–BITS, benefited tremendously during the initial fall semester from articles and features written by students enrolled in the BTE program. Student articles were considered so critical to engaging prospective new students that the effort to include student reporters and other staffers on E–BITS was redoubled for the spring semester. A highly talented crew of three students took up this challenge and wrote a terrific series of articles from the students’ points of view. In addition, one student elected to participate by furnishing original, hand–drawn cartoons for each issue of E–BITS. Choosing a recurring “Everyman” theme, the cartoonist looked at everything from the collapse of Enron to major league player salary negotiations. All of the articles and cartoons were in good taste and professionally prepared. Faculty comments on the articles and cartoons indicated that the material was not only timely but also insightful and added a new dimension to E–BITS.
3. T–shirt Design and Sales: What on–campus organization does not have at least one item of logo clothing to sell in order to build name recognition of and knowledge of the group’s activities? TeamBTE was in need of such an item; a seven–member T–shirt Design and Sales Team was pulled together. The goal was to design a simple T–shirt logo that would be popular with TeamBTE members and then to sell the T– shirts as a fund–raising and promotional project. Students involved in this project needed to come up with a design that would appeal to the proper market segment: members and prospective members of TeamBTE. They also needed to search out a reasonably–priced source for the merchandise, develop a project timeline, and then devise a marketing plan to sell the T–shirts. Over a several week period, sales were promoted through a combination of on–campus promotions and articles in the E–BITS.
4. E–Mentoring by TeamBTE: The concept for the e–mentoring program was derived from an article on junior mentoring that appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (Lewis). The gist of the article concerned programs in which younger, computer–literate employees mentor their older, less computer–savvy co–workers. In adapting this concept to TeamBTE, a two–member student team was formed and was asked to develop a plan for e–mentoring that could be applied to the resources available to TeamBTE. The students elected to develop a three–step e– mentoring program that would be available to Miami University BTE students through a specially–designed Web page. As a first step, using components of a model developed at The Ohio State University, the student team focused on delivering student–to–student mentoring by developing a questionnaire to pair current BTE student mentors with incoming student “mentees” based on interests and areas of concern. Initial contacts were designed to occur over the Internet, with face–to– face meetings established after mentor and mentee pairs agreed to work together. As a second step, the work on this project will eventually involve extending the mentor and mentee relationships to include mentors from the local business community who can assist BTE students with their careers. Similar to the insight provided by the Star Tribune article, the third step in the e–mentoring program will involve student mentors assisting business owners in better understanding current business issues and trends.
5. Faculty Interviews: The BTE program at Miami University is spread across two campuses and also includes multiple courses taught at several area high schools. With such a large geographic dispersion of the faculty, it is virtually impossible for students to get to know everyone who teaches in the program. For this project, four student team members each interviewed ten full–time or adjunct faculty members in the BTE program. They learned about their business specialties but also something about each faculty member as a person. Students wrote up their interviews, asking faculty members for content approval and comments, and secured a digital photo of each faculty member interviewed. These faculty interviews are scheduled to run in E–BITS, can be used in department brochures, and will ultimately find a home on the BTE department’s Web site.
6. TeamBTE Pamphlet: As TeamBTE works to integrate itself more completely into the business communities surrounding Miami University’s branch campuses, there is a continuing need to contact individual businesses to explain the potential benefits of working with the students and faculty of the BTE Department. Although good marketing practices would ideally require that these contacts be made in person, there are always situations in which a personal contact is not possible. In this project, a team of two students worked to develop a professional–quality pamphlet that could be mailed to prospective business contacts or left with a business owner when making a personal visit. The pamphlet briefly introduces the concept of TeamBTE and lists the advantages of membership. A free subscription to E–BITS is offered along with contact information for the TeamBTE faculty advisor. The student team members choosing to work on this project found themselves quickly immersed in the theory of brochure and pamphlet design, printing, mailing, and other tasks. The end result was a full– color pamphlet that has received high marks in its initial usage.
7. TeamBTE Video: The most ambitious project undertaken to date has been the development of a video to market TeamBTE to potential student and business community members. TeamBTE representatives wanted a video that could be shown at area high schools, during college recruiting activities on the Miami University branch campuses, or to local business and community groups. Through an unusual coincidence, one student in the Spring Semester BTE 105 class was a professional videographer with his own studio in the Middletown area. He jumped at the opportunity to participate in this project and was joined by a team of seven other students who were eager for the chance to work with someone in that profession. The end product of this team effort turned out to be a set of two videos, each of which carries the basic message of TeamBTE. One video is based around a nightly newscast theme, while the other is a takeoff on the popular network television show Unsolved Mysteries. These videos, available as VHS tapes or CDs, will allow TeamBTE members to promote the organization.
The aforementioned projects have helped TeamBTE to expand its membership and to work toward building additional communications links with for–profit businesses, nonprofit organizations, and governmental agencies. Future efforts are likely to include developing additional fund–raising or marketing materials (for example, a TeamBTE calendar is currently under construction) and specific projects to link businesses with students who have an interest in a particular field. TeamBTE has also been encouraged to participate more heavily in the college recruiting process, especially including visits to area high schools that have traditionally been key feeder schools for the two–year programs on Miami University’s branch campuses. Extending TeamBTE’s role to include working with incoming students who have a potential interest in majoring in a business discipline would be a natural fit for the more experienced individual or business in helping the less experienced individual in business.
In one academic year, TeamBTE grew from a concept to a fully– functioning campus organization with a membership of 1,000 individuals. Through the hard work of a number of individuals, TeamBTE’s mission and vision have been clarified, and several TeamBTE activities are in place to broaden student–to–student, faculty–to–student, and business–to–student interactions. The key to maintaining the organization in its vital, growth–oriented state is to stay in touch with the latest business issues and trends and the desires of its diverse stakeholders. Through its continuing activities, TeamBTE is positioned to strongly contribute to the future success of the Business Technology program on both of Miami University’s branch campuses.
Hilton, C. and Kameda, N. (1999, January/February). “E–Mail And The Internet as International Business Communication Teaching and Research Tools–a Case Study.” Journal of Education for Business, 74(3), 181–185.
Lewis, D. E. (2001, June 18). “Junior Mentors.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, p. D1.
Tillett, S. (2000, October 30). “Educators Begin to Reach Out—the Net Cuts Costs, Simplifies Management–and Could Make Distance Learning a Winner. Internetweek, 835, 49–56.
General References (Not Cited)
Afuah, A. and Tucci, C. (2001). Internet Business Models and Strategies: Text and Cases. New York: McGraw–Hill/Irwin.
Kalakota, R. and Robinson, M. (2001). E–Business 2.0: Roadmap for Success. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison–Wesley.
[Editor’s note: See previous article.]