We are pretty much reading the Times from cover to cover these days, Inevitably, now that we are actually paying for the news, its quality At colleges and universities nationwide, e-mail has made professors One student skipped class and then sent the professor an e-mail message It has been years now since we had a student without an email account. These The reality is that we DO rely on email to keep in touch with out \n These days, they say, students seem to view them as available around Perhaps it has to do with the fact that our students are all foreigners, We encourage them to write, we really do. During the first It doesn’t make any difference. In the course of a 12-week Currently, for example, after getting the semester off to what Were we plowed under by the resulting wave of sympathetic email? The stakes are different for professors today than they were even a Well, we have checked and so far none of the faculty in our On the other hand, our students would have real reason to Once we are retired or win the lottery, however, all Christopher J. Dede, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education Perhaps this is one of the hidden perqs of teaching We have had students lie to our faces, but without exception Students also use e-mail to criticize one another, Professor This, now, is a real problem for the Dowbrigade, and here we are The kids who have that natural knack for languages digest the material What frankly chaps our ass are the head cases, the "special" kids, Quite frankly, this is a crime, these egotistical losers are robbing We seem to have strayed rather far from student-teacher email. The We find it easier and more reliable to post a message to the class from the New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An interesting article appeared on the front page of the New York Times today concerning the balance between utility and imposition represented by student email to college professors. We are pretty much reading the Times from cover to cover these … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/timoney.jpg\")
An interesting article appeared on the front page of the New
\n York Times<\/a> today concerning the balance between utility and imposition represented
\n by student email to college professors. <\/em><\/p>\n
\n as the morning trek to buy it at the Keno Spa on the corner, where swarthy
\n middle-aged Armenians with time on their hands sit around drinking coffee
\n and watching
\n numbers flash on faded, dusty CRTs hanging in the corners, has come to
\n constitute one of our three daily doctor-ordered walk-arounds, supposedly
\n to avoid bedsores and blood clots.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n and blogability seems to have declined. So we were delighted to see a
\n front page article on a topic we actually knew something about, and on
\n which we feel moved to opine.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n much more approachable. But many say it has made them too accessible,
\n erasing boundaries that traditionally kept students at a healthy distance.<\/p>\n
\n asking for copies of her teaching notes. Another did not like her grade,
\n and wrote a petulant message to the professor. Another explained that
\n she was late for a Monday class because she was recovering from drinking
\n too much at a wild weekend party<\/p>\n
\n days, the first week collections of email addresses is more a question
\n of which<\/strong> email address to give out. The general catch-all
\n we use to sign up for every assorted thing and which has become such a
\n spam spa that the filters that make it marginally functional end up sending
\n at least one in ten real messages to the Davey Jones Locker of our Junk
\n Mail folder? The super-secret virgin personal address which is still thankfully
\n 99% spam-free, but only because it is so jealously guarded? One of
\n the short-term, throwaway addresses we can create, divert or destroy with
\n a click on our personal Dowbrigade domain?<\/em><\/p>\n
\n students during the semester. Our email address, along with our office
\n hours and
\n office telephone are listed on the syllabus that students get in week
\n one. Because we are rarely in our office (favoring classrooms, the
\n Multimedia Learning Labs, the faculty computer room, the IT office or
\n the Starbucks down the block), have yet to master the remote review
\n of messages to that phone line, and as a rule refuse to share our cell
\n phone number with students, they soon discover that email is the only
\n viable
\n method for getting our
\n attention
\n on short
\n notice.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n the clock, sending a steady stream of e-mail messages – from 10 a week
\n to 10 after every class – that are too informal or downright inappropriate.<\/p>\n
\n and almost all from upper-class families who seem to have successfully
\n imbued them with very good manners, or perhaps with the supposition
\n we have heard whispered in the halls of academia, that our students
\n are intimidated by our intellect or attitude, but we actually get very
\n little email from students.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n few days, we put together a mailing list so that we can communicate
\n with
\n the entire group in a single message, but we also write individual
\n notes to students on assignments, trips, student questions, issues
\n that come up in class, holiday greetings, etc. We tell them how much
\n we like getting updates from ex-students, holiday greetings, news on
\n academic milestones, anecdotes, etc. We emphasize the importance of
\n open lines of communication, the fact that they should look at their
\n professors as resources, the centrality of the skill of asking good
\n questions in learning a second language. We offer to help with homework,
\n provide personal advice on everything from combating culture shock
\n to putting together an appropriate winter wardrobe, assist in the process
\n of selecting and applying to American Universities, share
\n our wife’s
\n encyclopedic
\n knowledge
\n of Boston’s secret shopping gems and how to get to them via public
\n transportation. We promise to answer all emails, if not immediately,
\n at least within a reasonably short time frame.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n semester, with two or three classes of 12-16 students each, we probably
\n accumulate
\n a grand total of 4 or 5 emails total, mostly requests for letters of
\n recommendation to be included in their college and grad school applications,
\n letters we are prohibited from writing by the University itself until
\n they are no longer actively our students.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n we considered a roaring start, with a really great group of students,
\n all in their 20’s, from 9 different countries, but all bright, well-educated,
\n with the kind or urbane international good manners typical of the
\n emerging globalized ruling class, we sadly informed the lads and
\n lasses that the old Dowbrigade was going in for some serious plumbing
\n repairs, and followed up with some truly gruesome photos on the
\n class Wiki. <\/em><\/p>\n
\n Hardly – other than the three Latin ladies in the class (thanks Carolina,
\n Ana and Tatiana), not a peep.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n decade ago, said Patricia Ewick, chairwoman of the sociology department
\n at Clark University in Massachusetts, explaining that "students
\n are constantly asked to fill out evaluations of individual faculty." Students
\n also frequently post their own evaluations on Web sites like rateyourprofessor.com
\n and describe their impressions of their professors on blogs.<\/p>\n
\n category (non-degree affiliated programs) have made it onto the
\n Rate Your
\n Professor type web sites. And although we have been asking
\n for 10 semesters now, only one young Korean woman had her own blog,
\n and it was only marginally a blog, and pretty lame to boot.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n worry, had we not sworn a solemn oath not to blog about specific
\n students,
\n past or present, even with the names and national origins changed
\n to protect the paying customers. It just isn’t worth the
\n potential problems, especially for someone who depends as much
\n on his main gig as the Dowbrigade does just now. After a near brush
\n with disaster for merely commenting on the case of a colleague
\n who web-published astonishingly inappropriate comments about students,
\n we have learned our lesson.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n bets are off. You can bet we are collecting all sorts of juicy
\n episodes
\n and anecdotes, ready for eventual incorporation into the loose
\n fabric of reminiscence and fantasy which constitutes our body
\n of work.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n who has studied technology in education, said these e-mail messages showed
\n how students no longer deferred to their professors, perhaps because
\n they realized that professors’ expertise could rapidly become outdated.<\/p>\n
\n foreign students – they still defer to their teachers. Or maybe
\n its just
\n us. In all of our 20 years teaching at major American universities
\n we have never had a student call us out or lack respect to our
\n face. God knows how they talk about us behind our backs.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n they have been amateurs in the lying business, and it was usually
\n pretty easy to catch them in their lies and make them regret
\n thinking they were smarter than us in the first place. Plus,
\n so far we’ve managed to stay a step or two ahead of them on the
\n technological expertise stuff as well.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n Ahdieh said. He paraphrased this comment: "You’re spending
\n too much time with my moron classmates and you ought to be focusing
\n on those of us who are
\n getting the material."<\/p>\n
\n being serious. On the didactic level, we can justify spending
\n more time with those students who are honestly struggling with the
\n material. The
\n Dowbrigade was once one of those students. It took us four years
\n to get through the two years of French we needed in High School to even
\n apply to the good colleges.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n like hungry Sumos after a 10-day tournament. With a little guidance and
\n encouragement, they make steady, swift progress. But its the kids
\n who are working overtime, trying as hard as they can, and for whatever
\n reason having problems mastering some of basic language skills, these are
\n the kids we can relate to, and can help the most.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n who think the rules don’t apply to them, that they don’t have to attend
\n class
\n regularly, or show up on time. There are ways to deprogram these
\n individuals, but it must be done carefully, and fully documented, and
\n it demands an inordinate amount of time. Unfortunately, this time comes
\n out of the extra hours a teacher has to dedicate to the kids who are coming
\n every day and doing everything else asked of them.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n time and degrading quality of services for the honest, hardworking majority,
\n who are paying top dollar and deserve a teacher’s full-time attention.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n bottom line here is that email itself is no longer a reliable or reputable
\n way
\n of doing business. Between spam, lost messages, over-amped filters
\n and identity theft, it is impossible to depend on email for serious academic
\n obligations. Lately, we have started insisting that our students put the word ESSAY in all caps
\n in the subject line of any message containing an attachments, making it
\n easier to fish them out of the Junk Mail Box, but this is an imperfect
\n workaround.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n Wiki, or create a short entry on the class blog, or even upload a change
\n to
\n the
\n static
\n class web page. Then the onus is on the student to check the site
\n indicated (which we write on the board in class), and they have no excuse
\n if they do not.<\/em><\/p>\n