I am coming to believe that specific required assignments are the only way
to get students to carry class discussion on to email. Even when I
required that they subscribe to a listserv specifically for our class,
there was about 1/5 of the class who held out till near the end of the
term. Because we met once a week, I critiqued papers by email; even
then, students often did not check their mail. Their participation was
part of their class participation grade; next time I would give one
segment of their grade for computer participation.
In this term's class, I've left it as extra credit and only 2
of 25 have subscribed. In site of the media hype, there is a great deal
of resistance to the electronic classroom, in my so 'umble experience.
Generally about 15% of students make use of email to ask me questions, etc.
Bette-B Bauer
U of Oregon
This is a little off the topic of how to effectively integrate the use
of email into a syllabus, but I thought it might be of use. There is a
Unix program called hypermail which will allow you to keep a
web-accessible, hypertextual archive of an email discussion, sortable and
viewable (at the user's discretion) by author, subject, date, or thread.
You may need the assistance of someone with sysadmin powers to set this
up, but I think it's well worth it. The source for information on the
program (and for the program itself) is:
hypermail website
If you'd like to look at an example of what it can do, you can go to:
searching a mailbox by thread
John Unsworth
John Unsworth wrote to recommend the use of Hypermail, a UNIX utility which tranforms email into Web pages which are sortable. I second his recommendation: the combined use of class email aliases with Hypermail on the Web is the most powerful course management tool I've seen to date.
Doug Smith
Professor, English
Cal Poly
San Luis Obispo
I've had the same experience. But this time, I'm giving a few pop assignments which will only come to the students by email. We'll see what happens then, when they have no alternative but to deal with the challenge electronically.
Robin Kornman
I am coming to believe that specific required assignments are the only way
to get students to carry class discussion on to email. Even when I
required that they subscribe to a listserv specifically for our class,
there was about 1/5 of the class who held out till near the end of the
term. Because we met once a week, I critiqued papers by email; even
then, students often did not check their mail. Their participation was
part of their class participation grade; next time I would give one
segment of their grade for computer participation.
In this term's class, I've left it as extra credit and only 2
of 25 have subscribed. In site of the media hype, there is a great deal
of resistance to the electronic classroom, in my so 'umble experience.
Generally about 15% of students make use of email to ask me questions, etc.
Bette-B Bauer
U of Oregon
I have never required my students to use email in my courses, but my
students and I use it extensively in all my courses. I usually
distribute a class list with both phone numbers and email addresses for
each student. (the Univ. of Oregon requires a signed release form from
each student before I can do this.) I also make a web page of the class
from which students can send each other mail. I have a tight teaching
schedule and maintain close contact with each of my students; email, I
find, is the best way for me to meet the individualized needs of my
students. If they need to make an appt, arrange for a letter of
recommendation, an early or late exam, it is easier for me to
arrange this from my computer in my office than after class when we are
rushed for time. Once they establish an initial contact, it is easy to
suggest they could send drafts, outlines, and even their final projects
via email.
Since I teach foreign language, I encourage them to write in
Norwegian, and offer them information on how to subscribe to email lists
(such as NorWord that connects them with other students learning the same
language) and newsgroups. One of the advantages to introducing email and
educational technology in foreign language courses, is that I have
contact with students for a year or two; and can introduce ed tech
gradually. I would also argue that there are many similarities between
teaching a foreign language and teaching electronic communication: that
the pedagogical principles of teaching students a "foreign" language are
quite similar to those of teaching students to communicate electronically.
Zoe Borovsky
Dept of Germanic
University of Oregon
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