Post 333: Why should you tell students when you are available to answer email?

Post  333: Why should you tell students when you are available to answer email?

It is important to tell students when you are available to answer email so a) students do not get upset if you take too long to answer an urgent email. b) students in different time zones do not call you at 3Am in the morning in your time zone.  c) students can be happy to get a response in real time if they need your help right away.

I have had students get upset if I take too long to answer an urgent email. If, for example, a student posts an email on a Friday night, chances are over the weekend, I may take one or two days off from the classroom and that poor online student would have to wait 2 days to get a response. The longer that poor student waits, the more upset he gets, and he just might complain to your boss that you are an irresponsive teacher!

So, what I do, is I post my contact information, my office hours, and the time I am available for email. I give students notice of how long I may be away from the computer especially during a weekend.  By posting when I am available and when I am not available, I avoid students getting upset if I am perceived as late in responding to their email.

Teaching in an asynchonous online classroom, I had students from all over the world in many time zones.  I once had a teaching colleague who had a student who would call her at 3AM her time because in Korea where the student was stationed, she would do her homework right after she got off work in Korea which was 4PM Korea time. That student never thought that her teacher would be sleeping.  Because it is an online class, students seem to think their teacher is 'on call' 24/7 for email and for telephone like a robot or like their asynchronous classroom forums!  It is wise to post for your students what time zone you live in so they can calculate the daytime hours to contact you!

As Scott Warnock so aptly put it in his book, Writing Together "There is a temptation in an online course for you (the student) to think of your professor as a robot who never sleeps." Then, Warnock uses humor to tell students that he needs to sleep early because of his age, continues, "While you are college students, and you may do some of your most productive work at 2 in the morning, I am an oldish man who goes to sleep at 10:30PM. Remember that when you email me in the wee hours of the morning and can't understand why I haven't responded to you."