Dear friend of the blog and hilarious motherfucker PhysioProf has a post up right now at his joint.
Just short of telling the student-filled science blogosphere to get offa his lawn, Professor Physio writes:
I don't respond to any e-mails from classroom students of any kind. Period. I make this policy known at the beginning of every semester, and let students know that if they would like to make an appointment to talk to me, they can call me on the phone.
When I was a student, there was a serious activation energy required to disturb a professor. The idea that students should be able to just text message professors from the basement of the motherfucking fraternity and the professor is supposed to respond is ludicrous. Fuck these little overentitled pissants.
I had never considered it an option to just have a no email policy, but I think I love it and I may try it. I'm all about Twitter and email and what-not, but when teaching I have also received a ridiculous number of emails with, frankly, frequently inane questions and typing a response to each one takes a fucktillion years. Emails that I know were fired off without a serious amount of thought. I know that the questions seemed important to them at the time but, dude, sometimes that level of accessibility breeds helplessness.
So, whatdayathink, little muffins? A stroke of brilliance or a sign that PhysioProf has gone grumpy?
Education
Life Science
Comments
Physioprof grumpy? No! That would be impossible.
Emails about class material are useless. Attending office hours and being able to ask the tangents that the answers bring, being able to draw a picture and whatnot in real time is far more valuable and productive. To send off an email is easy and faceless and takes 30s and gives you the excuse to go do whatever, because then you're waiting on the prof to get back to you before finishing the homework or working through the rest of the material. Going to office hours and asking something inane at least carries the risk of making an ass out of yourself in real time, and therefore forces you to really think about whether your question is worth bothering the prof's time with.
Posted by: Toaster | November 27, 2009 1:21 AM
when i was a TA for my grad mentor, i was immediately instructed to do NOTHING to encourage the students to email me.
i learned that some of my students liked to send stupid questions, and if i just took my time answering, they would send a follow-up email saying "oh nm! i totally got it now kthx!" ugh.
Posted by: leigh | November 27, 2009 1:40 AM
When I was a student at Johnson & Wales University we were all encouraged to email questions, etc.
I think it's the grump factor. And learn how to setup filters in your email program.
Posted by: Tony P | November 27, 2009 1:53 AM
I tell my students to post all non-personal questions (personal to them, not me) on the course discussion board, where other students may answer their question and every student can see the answers I post. If they email a non-personal question to me I post it there myself.
Posted by: Rosie Redfield | November 27, 2009 2:11 AM
I try not to bother my professors about trivial things, but one of the possible solutions to that problem is that several of my professors forward any question they receive (more pertinent ones) to everyone in the class.
Posted by: Erin | November 27, 2009 2:56 AM
As a student I try to only e-mail professors when I'd get really stuck. It's always easy to say that students should just go to office hours, but quite often office hours would not remotely coincide with when I was able to get work done or would conflict with other things I had to do. I think it's much better to send an e-mail with an intelligent question about the work then wander into an awkwardly scheduled office hour totally unprepared.
Posted by: tcmJOE | November 27, 2009 3:40 AM
Must be nice to be part of an organization that can treat its clients with such contempt.
Posted by: DV82XL | November 27, 2009 3:47 AM
I don't think I ever emailed a non research advisor professor / academic in my undergrad (I finished undergrad in 04). I'm sure there will be some students that a no email policy won't phase at all!
Posted by: Angela | November 27, 2009 5:39 AM
No, not brilliance, just jaw dropping arrogance. It reminds me of a lecturer who once said (on receiving a question at the end of a lecture) "I don't care, I have my degree".
Students can be a pest but I prefer positive approaches like course forums as suggested above - at my uni these are standard. Even politely suggesting a useful resource is much better than leaving students in the cold.
Most of the students I teach are genuinely distressed when they come for help - these aren't people you should be horrible to.
Posted by: Doug | November 27, 2009 5:57 AM
DV82XL - if he took a leaf out of private industry, he could demand phone contact only, via a premium-rate line, and give them a series of options to call before they have to wait for 15 minutes being repeatedly told that all the operators are busy.
As for students being over-demanding, we had one who was stopping lecturers in the supermarket and texting professors at 2am...
Posted by: Mike | November 27, 2009 7:06 AM
No, I love email contact. It's the best. I just warned the students that if I get the same question multiple times, I'll just post the reply to the class website.
The reason it's the best is that it completely covers your ass in the event of student disciplinary hearings. I grad-schooled at a university that had a very relaxed and student-sympathetic policy towards academic dishonesty. Also a very relaxed and student-sympathetic attitude about grade inflation. Any teacher who wanted to take a hard line on grading found themselves instantly in a world of hurt--there were plenty of people who talked a good game about being a hardass and academic integrity, but in practice they were all a bunch of pushover softies who never gave anything lower than a C+ to the most useless and unteachable.
When the inevitable cry of "that's not fair!" happened, as it will when you're teaching general education 500+ students/lecture hall classes, I had all the emails on record to show that I had done everything reasonable to answer questions, provide study assistance and resources, maintained a polite and civil tone with everyone, treated all students equally. My ass was covered. Spoiled Brat's ass got the F he so richly earned. Spoiled Brat was happy to lie like a rug to the Dean about dates of correspondence, content of said correspondence, tone of interactions, etc. The stage truly missed a talent there. I have no doubt that if all we did was talk either in person or via phone, I'd have had absolutely no recourse and would have been made to give the little shit an A and pay damages for his emotional issues or some fucking thing. Best to be prepared.
Posted by: Lora | November 27, 2009 8:35 AM
LOVE this idea.
I'm not a professor, but I was a teaching assistant for my supervisor's class this term, and let me tell you, some people abuse the privilege.
1- Student X emails because they do not understand assignment, I clarify issue, they reply with a synopsis of their paper and ask if they did it right.
2- Student Y emails twice claiming not to understand the assignment, goes and emails my supervisor privately when my answer does not suffice, then emails 3 more times with inane, waste of time, obvious-to-answer if you read the god damn assignment questions.
3- But then, Student Z comes to my office hours, shows me a sign of life beyond sitting at the computer, asks intelligent questions. They're happy, I'm happy.
Posted by: x-ine | November 27, 2009 8:57 AM
I TA on labs and I lecture, and I always encourage the students to e-mail me, call me or come to my office if they have any questions. I consider it a privilege to be in the position to help them, and e-mailing makes it much easier. I would go as far as saying that I've found it essential. Then again, I make it very clear that if they're expecting me to just hand them the answers on a platter they will be very disappointed, but I'm more than happy to guide them towards the relevant chapters, articles and so on. On occasion I might explain a tricky concept. I've never found this to take up too much of my time and rewards I get out of it are always greater than the efforts. I make a thing out of being available since the professors might not always be. But I dunno, there might be differences between Swedish and American students. Swedish students might require a lot more "activation energy" before they write an e-mail.
Posted by: Daniel Ocampo Daza | November 27, 2009 9:00 AM
I wonder, what exactly do people who ignore students' emails think they're paid for? What kind of example does it give to students? That teaching is like working at Wall Street, where bosses get paid just because they're the bosses? If answering emails is too time consuming, one can decide to answer them only one a week, or post them on an open class website, or any of the other options people mentioned here, but simply ignoring them is a sign of arrogance and self-indulgence and nothing more.
Posted by: Adenauer | November 27, 2009 9:54 AM
Put a bulletin board or forum up on the class website. You can set up different sections for "homework" "lecture questions" and so on. Instead of having the students e-mail you, instruct them to put their questions up in the forum unless they are of a private nature.
What you will find is that other students are more than happy to answer most of the questions for you. You only need to drop in once in a while (or have a TA monitor the boards) to make sure there is nothing egregious going on.
Posted by: Paul | November 27, 2009 10:05 AM
Students need support and guidance a lot more than some of these comments seem to think. Is it really that hard to reply to a serious email where the student is clearly concerned with 'It will be easier if we discussed this in person' or 'it will be covered in the tutorial'? The blanket crackdown on the easiest form of communication for the student sounds negligent and uncaring to me.
Posted by: Charlie | November 27, 2009 10:57 AM
I encourage my students to e-mail me. I e-mail them problems, answers, notes, etc frequently. I tell them to only expect an answer around 10 P.M. (when I go to bed) or at 4 A.M. (when I get up).
I don't have a cell phone (don't want to be that accessible).
Posted by: joemac53 | November 27, 2009 11:12 AM
Ah, yes! The 'Sarcastic' method for the education of the unwashed. Simply as a brief thought, just how high can one be hoisted on one's own petard?
Posted by: Austin | November 27, 2009 11:20 AM
Students are not "clients" or "customers" of professors. Professors do not get paid to cater to the whims of students. Professors are not bosses.
Professors are teachers and scholars, not customer service reps.
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | November 27, 2009 12:01 PM
I think someone is way too grumpy.
There were lots of good responses for dealing with stupid student questions, but I don't think emails requesting a time to meet outside of office hours are unreasonable.
Plus, aren't there forms and things that they need signatures on? I would think that dealing with those things as email attachments would be easier than making them come to office hours.
Posted by: katydid13 | November 27, 2009 12:07 PM
Those of you who are angry at Isis et al wanting to avoid emails must not have had the same experiences with students. As a TA, I received multiple emails per day (in a 30 student class) such as:
"When is assignment X due?" (clearly in syllabus, online and paper copy given out)
"How do I answer problem Y?" (clearly in assignment, answer clearly outlined in notes that are posted online in partial form - they just have to fill them in during lecture)
"What time is class?" (never changes throughout semester)
Also, at two of the Uni's where I worked,
Posted by: HennaHonu | November 27, 2009 12:09 PM
I am firmly with no-email contingent. If it's really that important, they will go to the trouble of calling, meeting.
If it's not important enough to make that effort, then it's not important enough. A professor's time is a limited resource and must be treated as one.
Posted by: Anna K. | November 27, 2009 12:28 PM
"Professors are teachers and scholars, not customer service reps."
I definitely agree on this one. This, however, cannot be an excuse for simply ignoring your students because you don't like their questions. My point was that there's a bond between professors and students, and by simply ignoring the requests of students, one is undermining the professors' part in this bond. As the many comments above show, there are many creative ways to make sure that the silly and redundant questions would be answered by someone who paid attention, while still remaining accessible to others.
Posted by: Adenauer | November 27, 2009 12:36 PM
Most of my professors have only about one or two "open" office hours per week, which many students cannot attend due to schedule conflicts. They also tend to pick up the phone--or, in some cases, even give out phone numbers on the syllabus. Unlike Dr. Physioprof though, they are not narcissistic assholes, and they don't mind receiving and responding to reasonable queries via email.
Posted by: Dave C | November 27, 2009 12:45 PM
Sorry, the first part of the second sentence above was mean to read "They also tend to not pick up the phone. . ."
Posted by: Dave C | November 27, 2009 12:47 PM
Or just a sign he's a busy guy, and has lots of students? I'm teaching a small grad course right now and students have my email, my google chat and skype name. I've asked them to hit me up with questions whenever I'm online (which is pretty much whenever I'm awake since most of my work is on the computer) - and if I've got time I'll respond. Otherwise they find me in office hours or figure it out on their own. It works out quite well, but no way in hell I'd be doing this with a class of twice as many needy undergrads.
Posted by: ObSciGuy | November 27, 2009 1:33 PM
I find myself sending a lot of replies stating briefly: "That information is in the syllabus." Or on the course website, etc... I just keep the phrase on my clipboard where I can copy, paste, send in under 3 seconds.
I go through some trouble to keep an informative course site and syllabus, and I really don't appreciate being pestered to individually supply information that I have already made available. I consider it part of the student's training to teach them not to bug busy people with petty questions that they could answer for themselves.
Posted by: yolio | November 27, 2009 1:39 PM
That's a mark of a very different kind of institution from mine. Helping confused students outside the classroom is an important part of my job. I'm happy when students e-mail me - it means that they are less likely to fall through the cracks and drop out of college. (I should add that my students aren't overprivileged brats. Many of them are struggling to pay their own way through college, working multiple jobs and juggling childcare along with schoolwork. I suspect that CPP's students and mine are very, very different.)
On the other hand, there are times when I get e-mails that say "Did I miss anything in class on Friday?" I get the urge to write back with one word: "Yes."
Posted by: Kim | November 27, 2009 1:57 PM
I find many student emails annoying, but I answer them nonetheless. If the email question is something that was addressed in class or in the syllabus, I say "As stated in the syllabus, the test is on...." If the question is a genuinely good one, I post the answer on the course website so all students get the benefit of the answer. And if the student is confused and requires more help than an email response can provide, I encourage him/her to come to my office (either during office hours or some other time that works for both of us) so we can discuss this.
If the student won't come to my office? Well, I have documentation that I offered to help. And since every quarter I am almost guaranteed to have a "problem child" I like having my interactions with the student clearly documented.
Posted by: Alex | November 27, 2009 1:57 PM
I have a completely different policy. I encourage the use of email.
As a physician, I often have off-campus responsibilities, even when I am lecturing in a course. This makes regular office hours almost impossible to keep. I ask students to email a question if it seems straightforward, or to email for an appointment if they want to discuss something at length.
Last fall, I received between 10 and 20 emailed questions. I stripped off the identifiers (to protect the student), then emailed out the answer to the ENTIRE CLASS. Students LOVE this because they get the benefit of everyone's question.
Posted by: Pascale | November 27, 2009 2:01 PM
i think the ease of instructor access (whether that be the course director or TAs) makes it a lot easier for students to stop relying on their own devices to figure out problems. hard concepts are learned by spending a lot of time working them out, talking through them with fellow students, etc. before i learned how this worked, i would spend a good half-hour writing this nice guidance through the problem, logical step by logical step, and just as i finished i would get the cheeky "ok i got it thanks nevermind!" reply from the student. s/he figured it out without me, after relying on his/her own devices. i stopped making immediate replies, and in general they followed-up within a couple of hours and were happy to tell me they figured it out on their own. those that i didn't hear back from, i would follow up with them and ask if they wanted to meet in person, etc.
i'm always happy to help out a student who genuinely tried and still does not understand. but i have to protect my time from the students who want to use me as a crutch to avoid having to do the work.
Posted by: leigh | November 27, 2009 2:14 PM
Professor Leigh,
Academics as usual. Danke.
Posted by: Kalien | November 27, 2009 2:28 PM
I'm with Lora #11--emails over phone any day. I do not enjoy speaking to students on the phone; I find it awkward. Emails are quick, provide a cover-your-ass record (as Lora said--very important!), distanced, answerable at my convenience, and in my case, infrequent.
Comrade PhysioProf #19 said:
This is much easier to say with a straight face when your school is is competitive and flush with money. When it is non-competitive and hurting for tuition revenue, not so much.
Posted by: cm | November 27, 2009 3:32 PM
I've found that most of the time, I'll start writing an email to my professor, and before I finish it, I'll have figured out the answer to my question (and thus no longer need to send it)! I think the reason for this is that I always feel it necessary to think about how to formulate the question, and doing so often forces me to think harder about the question itself.
Posted by: Avi Steiner | November 27, 2009 3:59 PM
Alright, grumpy students who believe that should have instant access to their professors --
What is wrong with coming to office hours or making an appointment for in person help? Considering that most professors are not paid to teach 100% effort, is this really that unreasonable?
Posted by: Isis the Scientist | November 27, 2009 4:06 PM
Just to clarify: I used to accept e-mails for the purpose of making an appointment to see me, but half the time the students didn't even show up. That is why I recently modified my rule to require a phone call to make an appointment to see me.
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | November 27, 2009 4:11 PM
I've come to the point where I encourage students to ask questions of me by email "even if they are stupid" because the nervous but conscientious student may decide that even a reasonable question is "wasting my time" and then they screw up needlessly. I like students to come to office hours, but many of them can't because of work or class conflicts. I have come to prefer email actually because I can respond in a designated time I set aside for these things, and also the written format allows me to give a reasoned, logical response that students are forced to read, and so far, I've found that's helpful to them. Of course there are stupid questions, like "I missed last class; did I miss anything important?" But once I get over being annoyed by them, I find them funny, and after all, the writers are mostly teenagers, not exactly the most thoughtful or tactful of people.
Posted by: Clare | November 27, 2009 5:21 PM
One more thought. I did my undergraduate education in England. We hung out with our professors in the pub, and with some of them we could routinely go to their houses, and get invited in for a cup or tea and a chat. You could get a lot of questions answered in those kinds of "forums" although not of course of the "will this be on the test" variety. It might be all different now for all I know (I've been in the US for over twenty years). I do remember being absolutely stunned to come to the US, a place I imagined would be even more egalitarian, to find that status differences between professors and students (undergrad and -- to a lesser extent -- grad) were marked and fiercely guarded. Why is this? And does this have anything to do with the ways they attempt to engage with us?
Posted by: Clare | November 27, 2009 5:27 PM
Hopefully none of your students have children or work, and/or the people whose job it is to make sure that every professor's office hours conflict with another class that students are likely to be taking in the same year have been lazing off.
Posted by: Azkyroth | November 27, 2009 5:31 PM
As a former TA, I wonder how phone calls could possibly be less time consuming than email. Do you not have copy-paste on your keyboard? Unless it's just a way to discourage communication altogether, which is just plain grumpy.
As a former student, I would wonder if you'd ever pick up the phone, and what recourse I'd have if you didn't. Email time stamps allow for protection for both professor AND student.
Posted by: cyborgsuzy | November 27, 2009 5:33 PM
*shrug* Personally, I'd rather answer 10 emails than one phone call. I despise phone calls.
This is in part because I do *not* want to feel at their beck-and-call, and an email can sit for an hour whereas a phone call interrupts my concentration much more.
So, even reasoning from the same premise (professors don't want to be bugged) I come to the opposite conclusion as CPP.
It's a good idea to tell folks you won't answer every email right away (e.g. "I'll get back to you in 24-48 hours" is fine), and I think it makes lots of sense to reserve the right to *not* reply about anything that is in the syllabus. Unless of course you receive multiple emails requesting clarification on the same point (this covers your ass for when you reuse last year's syllabus and this year the 19th of the month is NOT a Wednesday but a Tuesday, and you're class isn't even scheduled that day and everybody is all: "WTF mate? I need that day to study!!!11" This happens WAY more often than professors realize, I think).
Dr. Isis- wouldn't someone like CPP say that if you're spending as much time to teach as your % effort, your doing it wrong? From a pure career-advancement perspective, of course.
Posted by: becca | November 27, 2009 6:00 PM
Regarding office hours and schedule conflicts:
On this, I am less than sympathetic with the students. My office hours are not the only times of the week that I'm available, they are simply times that I guarantee will be available. I can be available at other times if my office hours conflict with a student's class schedule, work schedule, family schedule, personal obligations, and whatever else.
This is not to say that any and every moment should be fair game for a student to barge into my office, but I've never encountered a student with a schedule that I absolutely could not work around if the student needed to talk to me, and I even put on my syllabus that in addition to my office hours other times can be worked out.
My least favorite students are the ones who hit me with a barrage of email questions and, when told that it would probably be better (pedagogy-wise for them, sanity-wise for me) to discuss this in person they say "Oh, my schedule conflicts with your office hours." Yeah, well, suggest another time. You read my syllabus closely enough to figure out when my office hours were, would it be so hard to read the following sentence stating "Other times can be arranged if this doesn't work with your schedule"?
I'm happy to help these students, but email is not a great medium for teaching, and a barrage of emails reveals a deeper level of confusion that beyond just the questions at hand. Come to my office and we'll talk. Don't expect me to conduct an email chat.
Posted by: Alex | November 27, 2009 7:09 PM
When i was an undergrad, email was, well...pretty much non-existent, so it wasn't an issue. No cell phones, no email, nada. We had to go to office hours. Uphill. Both ways. In the snow.
Posted by: PalMD | November 27, 2009 7:12 PM
Yes, Pal, but did you have SHOES?!
Posted by: becca | November 27, 2009 8:23 PM
grumpy for sure. how about make the students bother the underpaid, overworked, never appreciated TA's? Isn't that why professors have those? So they don't have to ever deal with students directly??
On a more serious note: I had professors in the past that made us email them from our school designated emails, with the class name in the subject line, with proper letter format and no 'txt msg' type speak, etc.
And other professors prefer email so that they never have to see the undergrads face to face.
Posted by: lol | November 27, 2009 9:31 PM
The request for school email is actually a reasonable one. If I get an email with no name on it from "prettyprincess89 at hotmail" requesting info on a grade, should I just go ahead and send off confidential grade information?
Posted by: Alex | November 27, 2009 10:11 PM
Recourse!?!?!?!? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | November 28, 2009 1:10 AM
Several of my profs have an outstanding policy regarding contact. They do not take calls from students, and they will only accept emails from your student email account formatted properly with the class number in the subject line. Of course they have office hours and accept appointments, but when they receive emails detailing the same problem for several students it allows them to send the answer to all.
Posted by: DJ | November 28, 2009 8:07 AM
As a TA, I tend to find phone calls intrusive and annoying. My policy is that I only answer emails that have the course number in the subject. Those then get filtered into a folder that I go through once a day. Emails on the same subject all get a mass response, emails about a small nit-picky problem get a quick response, and emails that are more complex are told to set up an appointment with me.
I'd much rather deal with emails at my own pace then have students calling me. And appointments are only for serious cases, because I do a lot of lab work and find sitting in my office a waste of time.
Posted by: katie | November 28, 2009 11:27 AM
The first day of class, I list several potential office hours that are convenient for myself and/or my TAs. I ask students to list any that they CANNOT attend due to a schedule conflict.
I select 2-3 time slots based on that list such that all but ~3-5% of the class can make it to at least one of the office hours.
I then feel no guilt with telling the students to come to office hours rather than showing up while I am in the middle of other work the rest of the week. Unless a student is one of the ones who cannot make the sessions, in which case I make exceptions.
Customer help lines have limited hours - and that is with people whose sole job is to do customer service. Even if you buy the student=consumer argument (which I do not, as it is strongly linked to "I paid for my grade"), there is a supply/demand problem here.
Posted by: reesei | November 28, 2009 2:45 PM
I don't see what the big deal is about PP's policy. After all, he isn't saying he won't make time for students who need him, he's simply specifying what channel they need to go through to work with him. It's not like it's every student's right to demand he use email to communicate.
Posted by: sea creature | November 28, 2009 2:50 PM
I don't see the big deal either. I tell my students to feel free to e-mail me whenever they need to. However, I also tell them: Listen, you have to understand (veramente) that I don't have time to read all the e-mails I receive daily. They usually understand that.
Posted by: andrea | November 28, 2009 6:23 PM
I would rather answer 100 emails than have 1 person telephone me. Student emails, particularly in the quarter system, are vital to judging how students are doing in the course before it is too late to change things. If you've only got 10 weeks, you have less time to make corrections if it turns out lots of students are having trouble with a particular concept. Maybe it would be less of a problem in a semester system. When teaching small courses, I encourage students to email me and I try to answer their emails in a timely fashion. As a graduate student I was a TA for lecture center courses, and as TA I received most of the emails. I think it's completely out of line for a student to email the professor of a lecture center course unless several interactions with their TA had proved extremely unsatisfactory.
As for telephoning to make appointments, that's just ridiculous. If a student can't make it to office hours, they can't make it to the phone during office hours to set up an appointment some other time either. And we all know how long telephone tag takes: it could take weeks on a phone when an appointment could be settled on in a couple of days or less via email. Students could really fall behind while waiting for the phone tag to play out.
Posted by: nobody | November 28, 2009 11:00 PM
Really? You'd rather talk to them than get their e-mails? I am a sad, shy little bear, and although I think I lecture okay (or I try to think that, because I am also totally bunched up about talking in public), I'd much rather answer an e-mail asking a question that's laid out in writing than deal with an incoherent question.
I usually forward de-identified questions back to the whole class, since I figure if one student made time to ask a question, another three wondered but couldn't be bothered or couldn't verbalize it. (In the interests of disclosure, I've only been the TA, not the prof - but profs have always forwarded me the student e-mails anyway.)
As to the instant-access thing - my dad was a professor of English, and back in the 1970s before answering machines were common (and before there was any call waiting or caller ID) we got calls at home for him from undergrads who would look him up in the phone book because they knew they were going to blow tomorrow's paper deadline. Now, *that's* unreasonably demanding and intrusive. (Perhaps as a response, my dad was kind of a dick about giving extensions.)
Posted by: ginger | November 29, 2009 9:08 PM
"What is wrong with coming to office hours or making an appointment for in person help?"
I don't know a single professor I've ever met who would be happier for a student to pester them during work rather than just send an email. And it is such a reassuring lifeline to know that if your really stuck with something you can email for help rather than have to make an official appointment to be told what a stupid/crazy/much-worse-than-they-were-in-my-day student you are.
:( This thread makes me really worried about the emails I've ever sent my supervisors. Being snarky at students about emails isn't going to make them all smarten up and be like the (obviously superior) student you were, it's just going to make them despondant and even less likely to ask for help.
And more convinced that their professors just want them out the way.
Posted by: Lab Rat | November 30, 2009 3:24 AM
I find this whole discussion hilarious.
I have and have had instructors who make it clear from the first day that they absolutely will not respond to emails. They are happy to see us during office hours and if that will not work, we can call for an appointment or make one during class. If it is something that can be dealt with on the phone, they will be happy to deal with it that way.
I have also had and have, instructors who make it clear from the first day that if we need to contact them outside of class and office hours, we need to email them. That they simply do not deal with things on the phone, because spending an hour listening to messages is not their idea of a good time. They usually specify that they will not respond to emails that are not from our student accounts, mainly because of security reasons (such as parents writing, claiming to be the student and asking for grades).
It is easy enough to manage with either type of instructor. I have never had a problem getting all my problems resolved, whether I had to contact an instructor via email, or phone. People managed to deal with their instructors when neither was an option, people managed to deal with their instructors when only phones were an option. I am really having trouble seeing why the fuck an instructor should not be allowed to set their own rules about communication.
Guess what? In the career world, for those who won't be staying in academia, there are going to be people demanding both. Not everyone is going to cater to the communication whims of their employees or underlings, no matter how much they whine about it. Learning how to deal with it in school is a rather good idea, as it prepares one for dealing with people who have a great deal more authority over you than one of your instructors does.
And for those who are whining about privilege and how important it is to be available for students who don't have it...Fuck you. You aren't doing students any favors by acting like there is something special or wrong with them that must be compensated for. It is one thing to provide some accommodations for specific students dealing with specific circumstances, it is quite another to assume wholesale that your students need special consideration because they're poor and underprivileged.
A fair majority of my fellow students fall into that category. Some more than others, but attending a community college in Michigan (where the economy crashed several years ahead of the curve) means that not many of us are all that privileged. Yet somehow we manage, even those who are working full time, as well as going to school. Some students get some accommodations for work and family issues. But about the only blanket accommodation that all of my instructors to date have made, is that the only exception to cell phone bans is child emergencies.
Posted by: DuWayne | November 30, 2009 7:27 AM
I'm currently an undergrad at a mid-sized university in Canada. To the best of my knowledge, every single one of my professors has been very specific about their distaste for phone calls- they want email only, and some make a guarantee that emails will be answered within x hours/ business days.
While office hours are undoubtedly better than emails, I have had many classes where there professor only offers one two-hour block of office hours a week, which almost always happens to fall during a lecture or lab for another class. Having said that, most of the professors I've had are fairly accommodating and will arrange a time to meet with you in person if necessary.
I do understand how endlessly irritating it must be to receive an assload of emails asking essentially the same question....most of my classes have an online message board mediated by a TA, educational assistant or the professor themselves. Again at the beginning of class, the professor will make it clear that all questions pertaining to the lecture material or assignments should be posted on the discussion board. There are plenty of students checking the board to provide an answer, and someone will step in if things veer off on the wrong track. I think it's a great system that minimizes effort on the part of the professor and maximizes benefit for the students.
Posted by: Salk | December 2, 2009 11:19 PM