- Teachers are used to responding to students' questions in the classroom immediately or if that is not possible then after class or during office hours. Students familiar with the Internet are used to clicking on an icon or link or sending an e-mail message and receiving a reply. Internet students who have been in a classroom and used the Internet expect that they can send an e-mail message to a teacher and receive a reply promptly. Internet teachers will thus have to prepare themselves for receiving e-mail requests and responding to them promptly. They should also prepare themselves for saving these e-mail messages and responses in the event the student never receives the message and sends a second request for information.
Fortunately, Blackboard makes the sending of e-mail messages easy for students and teachers, but receiving and responding to those messages and recording to those responses takes some planning:
- Understand the process of sending an e-mail message. Blackboard simplifies this process. Any time a teacher or a student has a question for each other, either party can click on the Communication button in the navigation frame of the course and can select one person or the entire class to send a message to. There is one problem that must be solved first if this process is to work: Each student must have a correct e-mail address, and each student should send e-mail messages to the teacher through the course e-mail system rather than using a friend or relative's e-mail service. If the student borrows someone else's e-mail service to send a message to to the teacher, the student may never receive the teacher's reply.
- Create an orientation activity for your students. Ask them to send a message to you and to themselves from the Communication section of the course to test if their e-mail address is correct and if their own e-mail service is working.
- ALWAYS REQUIRE students to use their own e-mail by logging into the course to send e-mail if they are using someone else's computer. Or else the student shoud set up a Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail free account and use that for e-mail rather than a home e-mail address that is shared with family members.
- When sending an e-mail message to a student, always send a copy to yourself if you are using the course e-mail feature. If you are using your own e-mail, such a responding to a student's message, always send a copy to yourself and then save both the student's message and your reply in a folder marked with your course name and semester. You may need this record to refresh your memory or document the correspondence.
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