How Will Students Communicate? by Steve Kolowich

College technologists and e-mail providers say that, in the campus context, reports of the death of e-mail have been greatly exaggerated.
Thus spake Zuckerberg: “We don’t think a modern messaging system is going to be e-mail.”

The Facebook founder said so in November, when his company unveiled its new messaging platform: a system, sans subject lines, designed based on the assumption that in the future most electronic communication will come in brief, informal bursts. In December, Zuckerberg’s prognosis was essentially certified by the New York Times, which ran an article suggesting that among young people who are in college or about to be, e-mail is quickly going out of style.

Meanwhile, learning-management platforms — notably Blackboard, the market leader among nonprofit institutions — have been building more just-in-time messaging features with an eye to becoming the hub for student-to-student and professor-to-student communications around academic coursework.

All this has left campus technologists to ponder the future of institutional e-mail systems, which are still by and large the standard electronic medium connecting colleges with their students.
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Source: Inside Higher Ed