Article about student e-mails to Professors

In My Humble Opinion
21

When I was in law school, all our professors gave us their e-mail addresses, office numbers, and HOME numbers to encourage us to communicate with them outside of class. Most were gracious about being approached during office hours and were great about e-mailing people back.

I am currently in grad school in an online program, where I live two hours from the city where the university is based. One of my two classes has one live meeting a month (all day on specific Saturdays) and the other is based completely online. As a result, e-mail communication is absolutely necessary, but we also have class discussion boards and even an anonymous “Vents” forum – kind of like my own class’ version of The Pit. The impersonal nature can be quite frustrating and is a major culture shock for most students (and even the professors are pretty new to it), so we’re all trying our best to make it work under the circumstances. E-mail and message boards are NOT the best media to communicate subtleties such as emotion or tone of voice, so occasionally people get curt or harsh, and others take offense to relatively innocuous things. But communicating with my professors is a necessity, and visiting them during their office hours is an impossibility.

22

Wow. Every one I’ve ever had has given out his or her email address, office phone number, home phone number, and address if they live nearby, and constantly encouraged their use. Most of them really did want to help in whatever way possible, and certainly had none of this “thou art unworthy of approaching me” attitude.

23

I think some of the points about e-mail etiquette and formality are well taken. I’ve never worked up the courage to lecture my classes about it, but one of my pet peeves is students who don’t even make a stab at proper English in e-mails. Here are two actual examples from last week, when my students were e-mailing me to set up conferences:

That was the full text of the messages – no capital letters, no attempt at punctuation. And I teach English composition! I don’t think they realize what an appalling impression this makes on the instructor.

That said, the professor who demands that “the less powerful person must always write back” sounds like she’s on a crazy power trip, and I would NEVER discourage my students from asking questions under any circumstances, no matter how silly the questions were. That sort of attitude makes it likely that they’ll be too intimidated to ask when there’s something they genuinely need to know. (And I don’t think the notebook vs. binder question is all that silly when it comes from a student straight out of high school, where many teachers are picky about the sort of school supplies students use.)

I also encourage them to e-mail drafts of papers*, because personally I’d rather deal with a lousy draft than a lousy final copy, but I completely understand why some instructors wouldn’t want to let themselves in for that sort of thing.

  • As a side note, the funniest draft I’ve ever received from a student had the thesis statement, “John Donne’s depiction of God is more accurate than John Milton’s.” Man, was I glad I caught that one at the draft stage!
24 
    I don't know of any profs who give out their home phone and address, but we all put our voicemail and email contact info in the syllabus, and on the info board in the dept., as well as on faculty websites.  Also, email and phone calls are the only means by which most of the adjunct professors can perform their office hours, since they may not have a physical office in which to meet with students.  Also, they can't get paid for "virtual" office hours if they fail to put contact info in the syllabus; this is a contractual requirement.    
     In terms of materials to be brought to class, everyone I know always lists all the required or recommended supplies in the syllabus.   Even if they didn't, there's no reason for a prof to freak out over a student's question regarding a notebook.  Sometimes they really don't know what to bring with them, especially if they're just out of high school.  
    I haven't seen anybody complain about a student's email unless it was  incredibly goofy ("What time is the final?" <---email written to a colleague only a few hours before the final in question; I have no idea if the student received the reply in time, but it's not as if they left much time for it in the first place, and they should have already known the time of the final);

or badly timed (in a similar vein, a few people have approached me in a morning class to ask if I got the email they sent me the night before–which usually turns out to mean at midnight or later. I was asleep, of course. I don’t sit up all night and into the wee hours waiting to read emails.)
Likewise, I will answer all students’ phone calls if they allow me enough time to do so (i.e., I cannot reply to a 2am voicemail until later that morning or afternoon, because I won’t find it until then. The sleep factor again…).

25

I had a professor that gave his home number once. I think it would take some pretty big balls to call a professor at home.

26

Never email professors? What a silly idea!

My second most recent email exchange with a professor was very useful to both of us. I was to present a PE lesson to my class at our next class meeting (it’s an elementary ed PE/Health course), and I would need certain equipment from the gym. Because my professor and I both work day jobs, emailing her to ask whether the equipment would be available from the gym’s closet was the most efficient way to design my lesson. While I was at it, I also sent my lesson draft to her for feedback; she offered several specific suggestions which I was able to incorporate, and the lesson benefited from the feedback. Since I was making copies of the lesson plan for all my classmates, they indirectly benefited: the lesson they got was better than it would have been without her feedback.

My most recent exchange with a professor illustrates the flip side of the OP. My Psychology 101 professor sent us an email titled “Consciousness Lecture.” It was completely blank, and had no attachments.

While I wish I’d responded congratulating her on a Zenlike commentary on human consciousness, I actually asked her whether she’d intended to include an attachment with the email. It’s not only professors that use email sloppily!

Daniel

27

Actually, my art-for-children professor has not only given us her home number, she’s encouraged us to use it as the primary means of contacting her. She’s a full-time teacher, a bus driver, and an adjunct professor at two schools; she cannot maintain office hours, and she’s a bit of a technophobe. The phone is the best way to reach her, as long as we call her after 9 pm, and she’s repeatedly told us that she appreciates calls from students and much more inclined to cut a student some slack if the student has made the effort to contact her and talk with her about their thoughts on the class (especially lesson and unit plan ideas).

Daniel

28

I called a professor at home once, but that’s because he was having a get-together for a bunch of us and I needed to let him know I might be a little late. Or if there was an emergency and you couldn’t get to class, and that was the only time to reach him or her, well, there you go.

29

Okay, Milton I know, if only because of Paradise Lost. Wikipedia tells me that Donne wrote sermons and did some preaching. So what makes the thesis statement so funny?

30

The impression I got from that statement was not that the professor was trying to “put students in their place,” but rather that she wanted to teach them some communication etiquette for when they get out into the real world. I.e., if you’re a job seeker, and a potential employer sends you an e-mail saying, “See you at noon Thursday for your interview,” you write them back, even if just to say, “I’ll be there. I’m looking forward to it.”

Re. student e-mails in general, when I was teaching I would always give out my e-mail address and my home number–but first I’d make the entire class solemnly promise, en masse, that “none of us are gun-toting crazy people.” I never had any trouble, though granted I haven’t taught in about five years, so things may have changed in that time.

31

I believe it’s the assertion about “accuracy.”

32

Except my profs know I’m scatterbrained. Disorganized, not so much. :smiley: I’ve also never missed a due date.

My point was that e-mail is fine for simple questions that require a short answer. Anything more complicated than that should be discussed in person.

Robin

33

Hmmmm… because they are salaried employees paid to teach a class in which several means of communication including in-person office hours, phone, voice mail, and e-mail are all considered to be standard adjuncts to in-class instruction?

Basically, what this article boils down to is that some 18-22 year olds have written some bad e-mails, even to authority figures. Pope Catholic, bears shit in woods, blah blah blah.

34

No, students who use email appropriately are using it in the sense for which he is paid. I have no problem with that, nor does he. I wrote “abuse” for a specific reason. This article outlined several examples of email abuse. I could list more, but I’ll spare you.

I agree.

35

The dude who got asked for a summary of what went down in class-it is completely inappropriate. He’s a law professor, I’m assuming he’s teaching by the Socratic method. That student basically doesn’t know how to take the abstract discussion and pull out the relevant legal issues and black letter law. That gets easier with time but you don’t need to ask the prof because they’re called study guides and old outlines that we all use and everyone knows about!

Also, figuring it out yourself is kinda the point of the Socratic method and no shit the reading in law school moves fast. That’s why it’s a bloody graduate program, not kinder-care.

36

I have more experience than most at being a student, and I’ve also taught two classes and countless labs. Communication between students and teachers is one of the purposes for which e-mail was invented in the first place. And frankly, I consider it a very good thing when students e-mail (or even call) me with questions or concerns. Even if I don’t agree with their concerns, it means that they’re taking the initiative in their own education. I have occasionally been called at home by students: When you teach an 8:00 AM lab, and a student needs to know if there’s any way e can make up the lab, since e’s sick today, there’s really no other way one can handle that communication (one could, of course, ask in the next class session, but these things are better for everyone if worked out sooner rather than later).

Quoth Diogenes:

Agreed: If a student doesn’t know a due date, that’s a failure on the part of the student. It’s a failure because that student should have e-mailed the professor and asked. If a student can’t find the syllabus, or isn’t sure that the date hasn’t been changed, that I can understand. But if the student then doesn’t proceed to ask to be sure, well, then, I have little sympathy.

37

Lotta cockneys in Bozeman these days…

38

Yes. Syllabi change over the course of the semester. Most profs keep reasonably close to it but there are a lot of reasons for due dates to be moved. For example, if the prof has missed a few days of class, it’s reasonable to assume a due date will be pushed back. It’s up to the students to show the initiative to ask.

Robin

39

I teach high school and I give out my email address to students and parents, along with my cell phone number. It greatly facillitates communication between my self and students and parents and really helps when teaching then kids that their learning is their responsibility (which is really about 40% of what I teach, subject matter be damned). When Little Johnny is like “I had to ______________, I didn’t understand ____________” or “I didn’t know ____________”, I can say “Well, why didn’t you ask me after class? Or email? Or call? Or text? Or post a query on the class message board?” They have too learn to see that when they hit a problem, it doesn’t mean “Oh wow, decent excuse! I can quit!”: it means you solve the problem.

All that aside, one of the advantages of teaching high school is that the atmosphere is more adult/child, so I can reprimand them (usually amusingly, though my sarcasm can be pretty biting when I know my audience is the sort to respond well to that) for sloppy punctuation and such. They don’t send me crappy emails more than a couple times.

40

“The least powerful person always writes back” might not be the most tactful way to word it, but it is concise. . .and it is true.

People complain about not learning useful job-skills in college. This article is full of them. You can start learning in college that there are people in positions of power and people in positions with no power. That’s the way it fucking works.

When in doubt, you don’t email your superiors with bullshit requests that you should figure out on your own. I have superiors and inferiors here. A guy working under me should not fill up my email in-box with turd that he shouldn’t be bothering me with.

If he does, it reflects poorly on him. And it’s on him to figure out what I consider bullshit.

Similarly, you don’t fill up your client’s inboxes with bull crap.

When I email my boss, “I need to take the 24th off for an appointment. Let me know if this is a problem, so I can reschedule,” I don’t expect an email back from him.

When he emails me, “Can you come by the office at 2:00 this afternoon?” I respond, “Yes, I’ll be there at 2:00.”

These rules aren’t carved in stone, but when you start out at a job, you’re less likely to make a mistake doing it the way I’m talking about here. The people who grew up in email generation need to realize they’re dealing with people who didn’t – who still treat email as a form of useful correspondance and not a form of instant messaging. You don’t write your professor, “i got class sorry”.

It’s a terrible question.

If I was the teacher I’d have had to restrain myself from writing, “I’m not your mom. Buy whatever the fuck you want.”

A somewhat reasonable question is “will there be a lot of pre-printed handouts in this class?” but that’s not what this college freshman with no experience buying school supplies was asking.

It’s the difference between asking “will lunch be served?” and “should I make a ham or turkey sandwich?”

Besides, even if there are going to be a lot of handouts, students differ on the best way to organize that. There’s no way the teacher can answer that question.