Tidbits, Resources, and Discussion for ELI Faculty

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Copying Faculty on Emails to Students

During the first fall faculty meeting, some folks requested that faculty not be copied on the emails ELI sends to students. I know that you are all overwhelmed with email and it can be frustrating to be copied on something you don't find useful. Someone suggested in the chat during the meeting that emails sent to students could be posted somewhere so faculty who are interested in seeing them could read them, and those who are not would not be bothered with the messages.

I thought the best thing to do would be to see how the faculty feels overall. Although this of course did not get a response from everyone, I did poll you in two ways: I asked a yes/no question during the second faculty meeting, and about 3/4 of the faculty in the meeting said they like to be copied on these messages to students. I also put a poll here on the blog, and 71% of you responding to the poll said the same.

It seems to me that this is strong support for continuing the practice of copying you on what we send to students. I don't think that posting the emails somewhere for folks to look at is a good alternative, because that would not notify you when something had gone out, and unless you remembered to check regularly, you might not be aware of what's going out.

But, maybe I'm missing something. Do you have any suggestions on how we can meet everyone's needs in this regard?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am one who said I'd rather not receive such e-mails but really, if 3/4 of ELI faculty who responded to your TWO polls want this, then I think those of us who don't can simply delete such messages without taking the time to read them. Perhaps what you can do is make clear in the subject line that this was a message sent to students. To avoid having such a note in the subject line students see, perhaps those sending out student mail can FORWARD a copy for faculty AFTER sending the student version (instead of ccing the faculty when the original is sent) and CHANGE the subject line by ADDING the note: "sent to ELI students" (or something along those lines)