The university provides students with many forms of communication, from Point Alert to   Blackboard. But more often than not, there is something awry with the systems. Mid-afternoon Thursday, my entire class spent a decent bit of time trying to force our way into our email inboxes, because one would assume that when it came time to print an assignment, you can rely on your school email. That would be nice; however, it is not exactly the case. Unknown problems such as lost messages, damaged files and downed servers occur frequently. We have these services available to us, yet students must still turn to outside sources, such as Google Drive and alternative email accounts, to make sure their work is available and to remain in touch with professors outside of class.One problem addressed in class is issues involving Blackboard assignments disappearing into the void of the Internet. There is also the sheer difficulty of using the system — for both students and professors. One wrong click can lead to an incorrectly submitted assignment with the inability to make a second attempt at submitting it. When used by my high school, Blackboard was just as difficult, but this newer version seems to have majorly backtracked. Even then, teachers turned to alternative programs such as Edmodo to achieve what they simply could not do through Blackboard. The Blackboard system is flawed in ways such as mere ability to be navigated and problems with the email notification system.Beyond what goes on in using the program itself, the student also ends up suffering in response. Professors will give up on using Blackboard. When students are unable to see when assignments are due or find out the things they missed on a sick day, it becomes frustrating. Admittedly, I avoid using Blackboard as much as I possibly can. I’ve never once gone on the site and been able to get what I needed from it without being confronted with one or more difficulties, making the process longer and more complicated than necessary.Considering the serious advancement of technology as of late, problems occurring within Blackboard could be avoided, even easily resolved. The never-ending updates of software and applications that happen almost daily give me the idea that these things could be fixed quite quickly were the company to put effort into that aspect. Nonetheless, that part of the problem is certainly not at the fault of the university. However, with nearly everyone harboring complaints about the Blackboard program, it would be a fair action to look into other programs to purchase instead of waiting for updates that already have shown a tendency to lack usefulness. It would probably take a while to do an overhaul on the computers and switch to another program, but despite that I think it would be for the best.I’ve found that the most efficient communication the school offers is Point Alert. On Friday morning, I was awoken by a message containing information about the hostage situation just a few blocks away. Most likely, students do not watch the news immediately after rolling out of bed, but they do check their phones. Whenever something with any possible endangerment of students happens in the campus area, having an update sent to a phone in a timely manner is essential; otherwise, students could walk right into something without a clue about the situation at hand. Point Alert is the simplest of all the communications between student and university, but it is altogether the most organized and effective.With this system working in an uncomplicated manner, the next order of business is problem-solving to have our email and Blackboard follow suit.