Karim City College, Jamshedpur, is taking one technological leap after the other.

After introducing radio-frequency identification (RFID) cards for freshers from the new academic session and management information system (MIS) under the Centre's flagship Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (Rusa), the Sakchi campus has started bulk messaging service from Monday.

The new system of communicating with the students is meant to keep them abreast of important dates and events lest they forget them, thus ensuing systematic and smooth functioning of the college.

The messaging service will be similar to that of banks or telecom companies. Students, who have mentioned their or their parents' contact numbers on the admission forms, will get alert messages for examinations, assignments, class tests, extra-curricular activities and even inter-college festivals. The Kolhan University-affiliated college also plans to later pass on information related to attendance, placement drives and social projects.

It has roped in Jamshedpur-based Unitech Services for managing the hi-tech set-up of sending texts in bulk to the mobile phone numbers of students and their parents.

The expenses and maintenance charges will be entirely borne by the college.

"After RFID, we thought of going ahead with bulk messaging. The plan has been on paper for several months and we are finally implementing it now. Through this system, we will keep reminding students about dates for registration, filling up of examination forms and examination schedule," said Yahiya Ibrahim, a senior faculty member of Karim City College.

Some RFID cards were also distributed on Monday at the freshers' induction organised in the campus.

Jamshedpur Workers' College, Mango, had once introduced a message alert system, specifically for attendance, but the experiment failed due to erratic Internet connection on the premises.

The Sakchi college is also the first in Jharkhand to simultaneously adopt the MIS, which is a computerised database of financial information organised and programmed in such a way that it produces regular reports on operations for every level of management. Under this system, new students can deposit their tuition fee directly to Karim City's bank account instead of queuing up at counters.