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[alg71]

I love the Chronicle but this latest article appears to make something out of a non-existent problem. If a small school has problems getting their students to read their email, using MySpace may make sense, and they might want to do this, anyway...

But all this talk about students who have four or five email accounts and don't check their on-campus email? An invented issue. Bizarre, really- it takes 2 clicks to set their email to forward to their primary account. Even my non-computer-literature students know how to do this, and most already have.

I tell all students they are responsible for checking their email MWF and I send stuff out frequently. If they don't check it they will have a hard time passing the class. I don't have any problems and I'm not at an Ivy League school or anything, in fact >50% of my students are community-college transfers.

It's their job to meet my expectations, not the other way around. And I would be surprised if this is much of an issue at large univerisities.

If they want to use MySpace, great, no problem. But to suggest that this, or will be, an actual problem- because students can manage a MySpace account but apparently don't know how to forward their campus email- is just weird.




 


 

[gennimom]

I had one student who refused to check his email and apparently didn't check his WebCT. Since his email bounced back all the time, I had a record of it. Amazingly, he didn't get a very good grade in the lab I was teaching.:)

[csguy]

But all this talk about students who have four or five email accounts and don't check their on-campus email? An invented issue. Bizarre, really- it takes 2 clicks to set their email to forward to their primary account. Even my non-computer-literature students know how to do this, and most already have.

It may take two clicks on your email systems but for others it may be more complex (use ssh to connect to the server and vi to edit your .forward file) or even impossible.

[drgrieves]

Tell your student that old people only know how to use certain old people kinds of technology. Like emails. And electronic grading.

[notaprof]

The reason students at my school do not read their campus email is because they get so many general campus announcements sent to the entire student body, messages about lost items, flame wars,etc. that have no importance to them so the idea of forwarding their campus email to another account completely ignores the reason that they do not use their email in the first place.  It shouldn't be too hard to ask each student at the first of the semester the email address they prefer the professor to use for classroom communications with the understanding that the student is responsible for regularly checking the email account they designate as the appropriate one. 

While we are on the subject, what I would like to see is every group on campus being limited to one announcement per event.  I also get very tired of announcements that come out every day for two weeks about a lecture on an esoteric topic that might appeal to less than 5% of the campus.  If people send out messages too often, I block all messages from that person so I don't have to have my box overloaded with unwanted reminders. 

Another pet peeve - fancy graphics or attachments that take up multiple MB's of space in my email box. 

[adhoc]

I had one student who refused to check his email and apparently didn't check his WebCT. Since his email bounced back all the time, I had a record of it. Amazingly, he didn't get a very good grade in the lab I was teaching.:)

His email being "bounced back all the time" suggests that you were using an invalid address.

[supernumerary]

adhoc, it suggests that the student's email box was full because he never checks his emails. Happens with some of my students - once it's full all emails bounce back.

[gennimom]

I actually asked the student about this. He said he didn't like email and never used his university assigned email account. So yes, it was full all the time. He also never went to WebCT so he never had his assignments or anything else. After about 3 weeks, I stopped coddling him, and told him if he needed his stuff he could get one of his classmates to print it out. He never said a word and never complained about his grade as far as I know. I believe he was having problems in the lecture portion as well, but I don't know for sure.

[philo]

While we are on the subject, what I would like to see is every group on campus being limited to one announcement per event.

This is a little too draconian; sending one announcement relatively early and another as a last minute reminder makes sense.  At my school, though, individuals are not authorized to send messages to the whole campus.  You submit announcements to a central point, and once a day an "omnibus" e-mail goes out to the whole campus that collects them all.  So much nicer than the old days when some stupid announcement would go out, someone would reply ask to be removed from the mailing list but would use "reply to all," and fifty or me "stop sending me these messages" messages would fill your box.

[jasonian]

I just find it funny that people think kids are more sophisticated. Who invented these technologies? Them? I rant a bit about thin technologies, like FB, that don't allow much more than a superficial form of communication in a shiny package. I've nothing against shiny packages of course :) but I'd prefer that they afford something more... If I could get my students to blog more than the minimum, I'd be in heaven. But there we have it. I agree with people who say this is much ado about nothing... if students can handle cell phones, then university email is nothing. And if they are sophisticated, they can set up email filtering so that only what they want gets through. I like it if students don't bother to read my email... as it allows me the opportunity to take up issues like personal responsibility and choice when they fail a lab or quiz because they didn't check their email, missing that vital bit of info... hee hee hee... who said learning couldn't be fun and meaningful.

I put a big long post about this on my blog (http://www.lemmingworks.org/weblog/?p=330) if anyone cares :)