Alice Pawley is an assistant professor of 
SciWo is an assistant professor of geosciences. She blogs about the intersection of science and real life - primarily based on her first-hand experiences. Her older posts can be found 
I haven't talked much about my teaching yet this semester, and it's high time I did - at least a little, particularly to contribute a bit to the discussion about PWIs. To be clear: my institution will consider me for tenure based upon my research, and to a lesser extent based on my teaching (I learned on Monday that our teaching expectations in my department are a little higher than elsewhere in my college because we focus our research on education as well). So my job is primarily intended to be about helping the engineering education research community learn new things, with a secondary expectation of helping undergraduates learn new things.
This spring, I'm teaching a section of our first-year engineering course, a required course for engineering majors. In the past, the course has been organized in such a way that all 1700 first-year students interested in engineering took it in the fall. This is a massive organizational project to manage - huge class sections, an army of graduate TAs and undergrad TAs, a dehumanizing experience for students and instructors alike.
This year, we pushed a lot of the sections into the spring semester, and are now teaching in a room that holds a maximum of 120 students, rather than the 450-person lecture hall we used before. Not only that, but they're in rows where the chairs are on wheels (so are moveable) and there are two rows of desks on each "step" of the room (so we can have them swivel around and talk with each other in groups of four). The redesigned room makes a MASSIVE difference, and I have hopes that I can actually get to know a few of my students, whereas it was hard to even try when I last taught the course.
Because my students are first year students, and for the most part, students who have spent one semester in college or less, we spend a little time helping them learn how to be good college students. Prepare in advance of class, ask questions early, use the help resources we've got for you, and so on. In particular, we talk about how to address faculty and staff (a hint: call them "Dr" or "Professor" as a default, and they may tell you to call them something else if you're lucky).
This semester, I decided to talk with my students briefly about how to send emails to their instructors. I gave them this real example from Fall 2007, modified slightly to protect the sender:
From: astudent@purdue.eduI pointed out that, in a course where there are assignments, lab tasks, online modules, sample exams, course notes, and a design project, it would take me longer to figure out what the student was asking than it would for me to actually answer it. I asked my students to consider this in the context of how many student emails I might get in a day, and to think about it in terms of learning to be professional engineers, and then I asked for suggestions on how to improve this email. Together we came up with the following guidelines:
Date: October 24,
To: my purdue email address
Subject: engr 126we were curious what we were supposed to be finding for "what the experts say". Thanks
Astu Dent
- Write a clear subject line that actually summarizes what the question is and what it might be connected to in the course.
- Address me in the email, and remember to call me "Dr." or "Prof."
- Give me some context for the question, situating it in the particular assignment or activity you're working on.
- Punctuate. Capitalize appropriately. Use complete words and sentences; this is not texting. Check your spelling.
- Be specific and detailed about what the difficulty or challenge is regarding.
- Ask an actual question, rather than leaving it up to me to infer what you don't understand.
- Be nice and thank me for answering.
- Sign your full name and give what ever institutional markings might be helpful for me to keep this in context.
From: astudent@purdue.eduCan I just say... I realize this should not be surprising, as all these students are smart people for having gotten as far as they have, but my emails from students since class have been STELLAR. Complete, clear, and polite. It has been a pleasure to respond to them. So props to my students, and a note to instructors: I totally recommend talking with your junior undergraduate students about how to write emails to you, particularly when you're dealing with this kind of stuff.
Date: October 24, 2007 11:45:48 AM GMT-04:00
To: apawley@purdue.edu
Subject: criterion 4 in the project for engr 126Dear Dr. Pawley,
Our lab group was working on the class project for ENGR 126 and we didn't understand one of the requirements (#4). Can you please clarify for us what you mean by "what the experts say"?
Thanks
Astu Dent, Team 4
I hope to share more cool things about my students over the semester. Unless they turn on me . ;-)
Comments
How wonderful that your lesson has gotten through! That's great - not only for you, but I'm sure they will thank you in the future when their professional behavior positively impacts their careers :). Hooray!
Posted by: PhizzleDizzle | January 27, 2009 10:50 AM
That is such a great lesson to teach! I get emails like that from undergrads, grads and professors alike - so for them to learn it so early on is a wonderful step forward.
Posted by: Mrs. CH | January 27, 2009 12:25 PM
: Address me in the email, and remember to call me "Dr." or "Prof."
While names still should have appropriate honorifics attached when used elsewhere in the message, there's fairly long-standing convention to drop the "Dear Dr. Whoever," line itself for email, in part because most email clients display the From/To/CC fields with the message.
If not ommitted, my understanding is that either "Dear Dr. Whoever:" or simply "Dr. Whoever:" should be used instead of the form with the comma, using the colon to indicate the more formal nature of communication between student and professor, paralleling the convention of business-letter versus personal-letter in snail mail.
I'm not an English teacher, however.
Posted by: abb3w | January 27, 2009 1:06 PM
I think I'd insult my students if I tried to have a long discussion of it; they're mostly seniors, so they think they're really good at e-mail - despite the fact that they're really, really not. I limit the discussion to my two pet peeves: meaningful subject lines, and signing their names. I have informed them that if I can't tell that it's for my class, and can't identify the student (if they send from some non-campus address), I just won't read the e-mail.
I think if I got the example you used, my response would be along the lines of "I do not understand your question; please try again". Whether I added comments about proper grammar and spelling and forms of address would depend on my mood that day.
Posted by: grad student | January 27, 2009 1:09 PM
Thank you so much for this! I only wish someone would do this for every group of incoming freshmen in every discipline.
Posted by: scicurious | January 27, 2009 1:47 PM
Don't you have TAs to handle this kind of ministerial clarificatory shit for such a large introductory course? Personally, I don't give a shit about the form of student e-mails. It just pisses me off when they ask stupid questions of me via e-mail when they can just as easily find out the answer from the TAs, or during lecture or office hours.
When I was an undergrad, there was no fucking e-mail. The only way to address a question was to raise your hand in lecture, come up after class, ask the TAs during recitation section, or come to the professor's office hours. This meant that there was a reasonable activation energy to overcome to ask a question, and thus there was a minimum importance to the question below which that activation energy was not exceeded.
With e-mail, there is zero activation energy to asking questions of faculty, and thus a vastly greater propensity for triviata and nonsense. We are professors, not customer service reps or human wikipedias.
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | January 27, 2009 10:10 PM
Yes, CPP, and I used to walk uphill to the lab, in the snow, both ways...I know, it's a pain. But these kids are going to have to deal with email as part of their professional life beyond their days as undergraduates. They will need to know how to handle it as a form of professional communication. I can't tell you how many ghastly email errors I saw during my time in industry. So people aren't just born knowing these skills...we do need to spend some time teaching our students something about professional communication. That is, if we think that part of our responsibility to them is to help them learn how to function as professionals in their field.
All that said...I do agree that email encourages students to ask many more trivial questions than they might otherwise. But, perhaps some discussion of what proper email communication is all about, might help head off some of that.
Posted by: Zuska | January 27, 2009 11:06 PM
We are professors, not customer service reps or human wikipedias.
Spoken like a man whose teaching evaluations won't matter for tenure.
I'm not disagreeing with you, btw. There's a difference between what is expected of me and what should be expected of me.
Posted by: Alex | January 28, 2009 1:21 AM
Perfect tutorial!
Posted by: bramki obrotowe | January 28, 2009 4:26 AM
It takes a few more minutes, but the "teach them to fish" motto applies here. Tell them the rules for your class, or even for school, and there's a good chance they'll learn to mimic the form for that context. But if you really want to help them develop professionally, take 5 more minutes and walk them the design process to arrive at the "rules" themselves - who's the audience? what goals/constraints/interests might they have - lots of email, lots of sections, a web site full of information? what do you want out of it - including short-term goals for information and long-term goals for future letter of recommendation? So, given the audience, the goals, and the context, what makes an effective email? Students (like most people) aren't dumb - they can do the analysis and come up with the guidelines if they're shown how.
Rules apply in the context in which they develop; processes allow one to think through new contexts.
Which brings me to a niggling point about abb3w - translating the rules for letters to email doesn't actually really work, and assuming that all email is equal doesn't work either. Emails to friends or colleagues with whom you have a close working relationship often don't need a greeting. But emails to people you don't know often do - it's an indication of common courtesy and, for people above you in the hierarchy (whatever that might be) and indication of respect. If I write to a dean, for ex., I always start with a Dear .... - first name if I know them, full "Dean XXX" if I don't. Same for colleagues.
That said, email is not a formal business letter, so the convention of using a colon after the formal address rarely applies (unless you really are writing a very formal business letter - e.g. a job application).
Point being - applying rules w/o analyzing audience, purpose, context, and now medium doesn't always buy you successful communication. It just buys you adherence to rules.
Posted by: Marie | January 28, 2009 7:37 AM
I do not think this is part of the our responsibility when we teach large lecture courses. There, our responsibility is to effectively convey the material of the course.
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | January 28, 2009 8:09 AM
I disagree, in part because if it is not taught in the large lecture courses it creates a continuing problem in the smaller courses later on...and I'm finding it's much harder to teach old dogs new tricks.
Frustrated by terrible emails of past semesters, this semester I added an email policy to my syllabus and threatened to send back any emails not meeting guidelines. I haven't actually had to do that yet (see, they can be trained), though I have provided a few gentle corrections.
But I really like Alice's method of introducing the topic so that it is really a learning experience for them and not just another course policy. I'll have to try it next semester.
Posted by: ScienceWoman | January 28, 2009 11:01 AM
I was just thinking last night (after reading an especially horrific batch of emails) that I needed to start the semester off with just this type of exercise! NIce to hear that it worked!
Posted by: unbalanced reaction | January 30, 2009 10:39 PM
In a similar vein, I was tired last semester of the vapid marshmallow fluff content free lab reports I was getting. I passed out a Cooks Illustrated article on how to make hamburgers, explaining how it was the prototype of a good lab report. It gave some background, explained the objective and constraints, reported on experimentation, provided labeled and illustrated figures that were referenced in the text, and wrapped things up with a documented algorithm (recipe). I was tickled to see that I finally got some decent lab reports.
Posted by: Female Engineering Professor | January 31, 2009 3:34 PM
we wish to have 1 computer for 100 students in my country then,first of all, we can start to teach using keyboards them.
best regards from Belarus
Posted by: opony | February 3, 2009 5:00 PM
I love your style. However I would like to make a comment regarding a comment by a poster about how you would like to be addressed. I think it is all up to the professor themselves, some are less formal then others and would prefer to be called by their first names, others would rather be addressed as Dr./Prof xyz. The majority of my profs are informal and have mentioned this, yet students still call them Dr./Prof out of respect. My thought is that if they worked that hard to earn that degree then they deserve to be called Dr./Prof.
Posted by: Carrie Davidson | January 13, 2010 5:35 PM