E-mail Routines

Description

With weekly emails you can create a course rhythm, give reminders, put certain topics in the spotlight or provide additional resources, tips or links just in time and show that the course is organized by someone. Further, showing that you are available to get in touch with students and that you are following the course, timely responses, showing availability and presence helps students to build a connection to instructors.

Note
Use cases

  • Regular communication is relevant for all courses but especially where there's less interaction. Weekly emails make it more personal.
  • For courses with deadlines to remind students.

  1. Stud.IP email to all participants
  2. Announcements: Suitable for current news. Announcements appear prominently on the course start page, profile, and/or facility summary pages.
  3. Element: Element is a tool comparable to Slack or Discord that implements conversation threading and can easily be used for the day-to-day organization of events, replacing the need to send emails. You can create a separate room dedicated to general/organizational matters where you constantly make announcements about the course.

MINI: You can use these tips quickly and with little effort in your current teaching.

Regular session preparation + 15 minutes / week to write an email before the session.

Inform students about:

  • This week's focus
  • Study tips (if applicable)
  • Organizational information (e.g. how late submissions will be handled)
  • Special dates
  • How to reach you (e.g. Element Chat, Email, walk-in hours/ office hours)

  • Let students know how they can reach you best (e.g. via Element, a Chat application hosted by VirtUOS) and if you will be unavailable for certain times.
  • If you use Element: make your announcements stand out visually, e.g. by giving them a title in bold face "Announcement" /"weekly update" so your message doesn't get lost and remember to use the @room mention (to notify everyone in the room).
  • Include a note on your preferred communication mode, e.g.: I prefer Email and expect you to check your emails at http://sogo.uos.de/ and NOT the messages in Stud.IP. Please make sure that your stud.IP messages are forwarded to your email address, so you don't miss our course announcements.
  • Set an alert in your calendar for writing emails to your course.

Martin, Florence; Ritzhaupt, Albert; Kumar, Swapna & Budhrani, Kiran (2019). Award-winning faculty online teaching practices: Course design, assessment and evaluation, and facilitation. The internet and higher education, 42, 34-43. doi: 10.1016/j.iheduc.2019.04.001.