One of the frequent conversations I have with fellow faculty
is how to optimize the use of e-mail to maximize the effectiveness of online
instructors. Here are a few things I have learned over the years when using
e-mail in my online courses:
1. Create a dedicated e-mail account for your
online course.
One of my first suggestions when starting a new online
course is to create a separate, dedicated e-mail address for the course. This
allows me to share the e-mail account with others (e.g., teaching assistants),
and aggregates all course-specific correspondence into a dedicated space that
is much easier to organize. I also use this same e-mail to send any
correspondence to the class (as opposed to my work or personal e-mail). This
makes it easier for me to find sent messages or to reuse them from one semester
to another.
2.
Use the autoreply feature to confirm
the receipt of e-mail.
I was quite surprised by the number of messages I was
getting from over-anxious students who needed to know if I had received their
assignments. All they needed was my confirmation that the file got through so
they could enjoy piece of mind. However, unlike when you complete an online
transaction and get a “confirmation number” or at least some sort of message
confirming the transaction, e-mail does not provide this reassurance …unless
you turn on your “autoreply” feature (also known as the “I’m on vacation”
reply).
So if you are using a dedicated e-mail address for your
online course, my suggestion is to use the autoreply feature to send a message
like this one:
Hello,
This is to confirm
that we have received your e-mail. If it is an assignment, it will be added to
the queue. If it is a question, it will be answered shortly.
This is an
automated message. Please do not respond to it.
Thank you,
The (enter course
name) Instructional Team
3. Reuse answers to common questions
can be reused in other replies, and to identify content gaps.
With some
exceptions, the e-mail messages I typically get from the students are not
unique. They ask questions about particular content, they need clarifications
for a given assessment, they want to know how to study to optimize their
performance on the upcoming quiz, etc... If I decide that an e-mail warrants a
lengthier-than-usual response and it requires some additional effort on my
part, then I will look for a way to avoid a “one and done” situation.
If I judge
that the question and response would benefit the entire class (i.e., it deals
with a common issue), I may post it directly to the discussion board (I would
remove the name of the student unless I have their permission to include it).
In those cases, I would thank the student for their excellent question and let
them know that I deemed it worthy enough to be shared with the class via the
DB. The goal here is obviously to avoid additional similar questions, but also
to encourage the use of the DB as a useful forum for these types of resources.
There are also situations where I have found myself copying
the question and my response and saving these in a separate file. I would then
call upon this file in following semesters to find the responses, and share
them with the teaching assistants as they needed it, and more importantly, this
method helps to identify opportunities to “tighten up” the content as I prepare
for the next offering. I oftentimes BCCed myself so that I could store certain
replies and review them at semester’s end. This exercise has helped me with the
continual improvement of the course by refining existing content, adding
remedial explanations, clarifying instructions, and if needed, scheduling live
virtual office hours when I suspect that the questions are forthcoming.
4. Embrace the power of mass e-mail
E-mail is my preferred method for sending out mass
communications to my class. I will use it to send out the welcome message at
the beginning of the semester, reminders for upcoming deadlines, announcements,
general tips, etc… Despite the fact that the discussion board might be the most
useful tool for Q&A and to get the pulse of the class, e-mail is effective
because of its simplicity and its ubiquitous acceptance as the preferred method
of communication with students. Let’s face it, students are more likely to
check their e-mail than to log into the course website and verify the
discussion board. The behaviour to check their e-mail regularly is already
established, and they can do so from many different devices. In this era of
free e-mail services, the challenge is to make sure that the e-mail address you
are using is their “preferred” one…something that I try to establish at the
beginning of the semester when I tell my students that the e-mail they use when
they create their account with the university is the one I will be using to
communicate with them.
Of course, sending a mass e-mail out can also increase the
chances of getting individual replies from students, potentially increasing
your own inbox traffic. But I have found that the use of pro-active mass
e-mailing has in fact reduced the amount of e-mail I have been receiving. It
all comes down to the timing of the communication. Given that I know the types
of questions that are imminent as certain deadlines approach, I will not wait
until the questions come flooding in to address them. This is where the
communication plan is key (see previous blog entry on survival tips to manage
communication). Additional follow-up questions can be handled on the discussion
board, or perhaps you could consider redirecting students to other resources on
the website for more information.
5. Get your e-mail opened!
The true test of the effectiveness of any e-mail you send is
that the recipient opens and reads it. What’s the point of taking the time to
craft a useful and informative e-mail that nobody reads? In a classroom setting
I have a good idea how many students “got the message” because they are
physically present and I have their attention (for the most part). But when
dealing with e-mail, I do not have that luxury. So how do I increase the
chances that my e-mail, which is competing for attention in my student’s inbox
with everything else, is opened and read?
Here are a few things that have worked for me:
·
I try not to inundate my students with e-mail.
o
If I send out too much it eventually becomes
noise like any other SPAM people typically ignore. I try to limit my mass
messages to one a week, as per my communication plan.
·
I do my best to make the messages useful.
o
If my students expect to find something useful
in the messages, they will get into the habit of opening them. What useful for
a student? Tips and hints on how to improve their grades!
·
I try to keep the messages short and sweet.
o
I don’t read long e-mail messages…I scan them
for important points first, and then look at details. The shorter the e-mail,
the greater the chance that I will read it entirely. This is the same for my
students (if not worse!), so I do my best to get to the point right away and
push them to other spots on the course website for additional details. This is
something I am still working on improving!
·
I use formatting features when I think they can
be useful.
o
This point relates to the previous one about
“scanning” for important information. I will bold, CAPITALIZE, and use italics
when I want to emphasise something (e.g., deadlines). I will also use bullets
and “to-do” lists for instructions.
·
I use the subject line to get their attention.
o
One thing that I came to realize as I researched
ways to optimize my e-mail is the importance of the subject line. Think about what
influences your decision to open an e-mail: you start by looking at the
sender’s name (or address if the name is not specified). If you recognize that
e-mail or person, there is a higher chance that you’ll go to the next step, the
subject line. Those 6-10 words that appear in the subject line are crucial in
the decision to open the e-mail…and this is where words like “Deadline,” “Exam,”
“Respond by,” and “Important” increase the chances of this happening.
For more ideas on how to optimize the chances that my e-mail
will be opened, I have turned to those pests who send me spam messages (i.e.,
e-mail marketing), as well as to research about response rates with surveys.
For example, I found that http://www.copyblogger.com/37-email-marketing-tips/
had some useful ideas, as did the article Return to Sender: Improving Response
Rates for Questionnaires by Jack and Patti Phillips (Performance Improvement, August 2004, see: www.ispi.org).
Whereas an internet marketer would rate the success of their
campaign with conversion rates, my indicator would include fewer questions,
better performance on assessments, and reduced dropout rates.
The danger of teaching an online course, especially when
enrolments are high, is the potential of the inbox swelling to the point where
communication is no longer manageable (call it inboxititis?). On the other
hand, if used effectively, e-mail can actually save the online instructor
countless hours of needless work.
Over the years I have found that not only has my volume of
e-mails decreased (despite increasing enrolments), but when I do answer e-mail,
I devote more time to crafting an effective response because I know that this
investment of my time will pay dividends because it will not be immediately followed
by more questions.
E-mail is not the only tool that I use to manage communications
in my online course. In the next blog entry, I will discuss how the discussion
board has gradually become the most important method of communication with my
class, and present the strategies I used to foster its use. 
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