“What I will do differently next semester regarding e-mail.”
We moved from the student’s personal e-mail, to the e-mail within D2L. I thought this would eliminate the problem of students not reading messages. This was a mistake on my part. Even though it is in the syllabus, students continue to either not read my e-mails or send questions to my personal account. I like having the correspondence within the class for many reasons, not the least of which is organization. If a student cannot access D2L, then of course, I appreciate the correspondence to my personal account.
Every week, I post what is due in the News item on the Home page of the class, and also send an e-mail to each student. This helps with the “I didn’t know” excuse for late homework.
Next semester I will add two things: Within my first quiz, there will be a question about what e-mail account to use. Then, I will post that no homework will be graded until a student sends me an e-mail within the system.
This move will not take care of all problems with e-mail, but I hope will greatly reduce aggravation on my part.
Next up: accepting late homework, yes or no.
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You and I are both thinking about e-mail this week. Your post is a nice practical companion to my more theoretical ramblings about e-mail. Here's a thought, Mary. Could you create an activity that has them use e-mail for the activity? For example, maybe they have to introduce themselves to a fellow student over e-mail and then submit a coauthored post to one of the discussions, which they have to compose together by communicating back and forth over e-mail. That way they'd be forced to use e-mail in a way that is more organic to the goals of the course and not purely logistical.
ReplyDeleteThat is a GREAT idea! I will try that for fall. We never know what will work and I like to try new things.
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