At this point in Brett Kopf’s life, not having kids, mortgage payments or little other responsibilities gave him the perfect opportunity to do anything — such as start a company from scratch.
As the MSU alumnus sat in class in 2007, he looked at his phone and realized its potential was not fulfilled.
Being a young entrepreneur with scads of potential business ideas running through his head, he settled on a rather practical idea until about four months ago, when he and his brother David established Remind 101, a company that specializes in notifications by way of e-mails and text messages.
“I thought to myself, ‘What if I could receive text message alerts before assignments are due?’” he said. “That was the kind of ‘Ah ha’ moment.”
Having debuted for initial testing at MSU last Monday, the free service reminds students about upcoming exam dates and homework assignments.
By the end of a student’s college career, Kopf said he hopes the service is not only able to boost attendance, but also increase grade-point averages.
“There are a lot of students with the color-coordinated pencil cases who won’t be using this, which is fine, but it just makes sense to me because I never have my phone without me,” Kopf said. “I never put it down, and I think a lot of our generation is the same.”
Those interested can sign up to test the service at remind101.com. From there, a student can search for a course, pick an assignment or exam and choose when to be reminded for multiple durations of time. A reminder message then will be sent to a student at the time and date selected.
Most courses have not been added to the system because of its infancy, but that likely will improve with time, Kopf said. To support itself, the service is expected to include short, local business advertisements within the text reminder, Kopf said.
The service will conclude its test run near the end of the summer semester and will launch exclusively at MSU in the fall. If it finds success at MSU, Koph said he hopes to take the service nationwide with potential applications for select smart phones.
“There’s really no method to the madness,” he said. “It’s just like a zigzag, and you have to navigate through the minefield sometimes.”
After securing funding and providing a base product, Kopf and his team believe the product will be well received upon fall’s official launch, he said.
However, associate professor of linguistics Alan Munn said he questions if the service will have any effect on his students’ participation.
“My experience is that people who don’t do their homework won’t do their homework,” Munn said. “I don’t know if my (in-class) reminders would make any difference from a text reminder.”
Kopf said he is aware that some might choose not to use the service, but for Caitlin Jurman, an interdisciplinary studies in social science graduate student, the potential for Remind 101 to expand in the future could attract more students to it.
“I used a planner, so I feel like I already had a system like that in place,” Jurman said. “But for people with iPhones or BlackBerries, I think (the service) would be a very useful tool.”
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