What can professors do to encourage properly written email messages from students?

Question

(Motivated by https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/55082/hey-i-was-wondering-of-your-students-write-like-this)

The writing style probably [stems] from the electronic age of text messaging. In any case, an email between an a student and professor is a professional communication (not a social text message).

[Example:] "hey. i was wondering if your students write like this when they send you emails or ask for your help in an email and weather or not your willing to respond when such little effort is put forth when writing."

What can professors do to encourage properly written email messages from students?

(Other than being a positive role model.)

Answer 1

The best way to deal with this is on a broader level and explain the rules during an introductory or preparatory course to all incoming students. For example, at our department, first year students have to follow a course on academic skills, and there they also talk about emailing professors. It also has the advantage that students don't have to deal with different expectations by each professor. One sign that it works at least to a certain extent: Students seem to learn in that course that they should sign with their name and their student number (something which I never expected and definitly did not ask for), but most of them actually do sign this way (at least when contacting me first).

Answer 2

hey. i was wondering of your students write like this

Alas, yes, they do (however, I'm a non-native English speaker who teaches international students whose level of English is extremely varied, and there's not much I can do about grammar).

Anyway, during the first lesson I give the following pieces of advice (which are frequently ignored, though):

1. Sender address: please, use your institutional email address and avoid personal fancy addresses like "[email protected]". But if you really want to use such an email address, at least configure the email client to show your real name and surname.
2. Subject: write a meaningful subject: if you don't put a subject and respect point 1, I'll surely delete your email without even reading it, thinking that it is spam.
3. Course information: please specify which course you are attending or have attended: I teach several courses and if you don't specify this I may not be able to answer (this piece of information is the most frequently missed).
4. Express your issues clearly: if you have long questions or complicated issues, just ask for an appointment instead.

Answer 3

I'd like to chime in as a student here. I tend to write my (initial) e-mails formally, however, many professors tend to reply in the most informal way possible. I often get replies like [sic]

Sure, can you b ethere 29/8 at 10am?

James

to my well-crafted "Dear Dr. Jamesson" e-mails. For students, this can be confusing: if I reply, should I go for "Dear James, I guess I can make it the 31st at 2pm" or still reply with "Dear Dr. Jamesson, I have a class the 29th. Could we arrange a meeting 31/8, for example at 2pm?" In my experience, many professors write their e-mails in an informal way (note that this may be specific for Dutch culture which is very informal to begin with). For students, this means that they'll continuously have to consider whether to continue writing formally, or whether the professor feels that that's highly necessary. For that reason, I don't think plainly ignoring students who don't write their e-mails in a formal manner is a good idea. Therefore:

1. Assume good intent. There are many reasons for students not writing their e-mails formally. This could include coming from a different social background (do you really want to ignore students who managed to make it from a disadvantaged position to university?!), an attempt to appeal to the 'personal' side of you as a professor (some of my friends write e-mails like that because they feel that professors will answer them more readily if addressed in an informal manner), or even being nervous about writing a professor. Don't assume all students are lazy - be that person who is happy if he can make the difference for one student in your class.
2. Reply as you would to a formal e-mail, and notify the student that you would like a more formal inquiry next time. Informal e-mails are usually perfectly understandable - there's no need to be condescending and pretend you don't understand informal e-mails. However, simply include a note at the start of your e-mail if you feel that the inquiry could have been more formal. Direct feedback is in my opinion one of the most important things in the academic world, so don't be afraid to simply (but politely) state that you want to be addressed more formally next time, and that other professors might appreciate that too.
3. Students talk. Believe it or not, but students sometimes talk about other things than alcohol and potential partners. It won't take long before the vast majority of students know that you prefer to be addressed formally. If more professors indicate this preference (since I imagine professors also talk about other things than research grants and potential partners), it won't take long before all students start writing all their e-mails formally. Of course, this process will have to be repeated with the new batch of first-year students. Keep in mind that the scope of being a professor goes beyond teaching the course contents, but that you are there to train students to be professional members of the academic community (otherwise, we could just get rid of all professors and only read the book instead).

I'd like to add the following, which I posted as a comment but I think it will help in understanding this answer (especially why I use 'informal' instead of 'sloppy' throughout this answer):

Informality displayed by professors can be confusing to students. This, combined with students' ill-conceived ideas of how much effort should be put into writing even informal e-mails, makes for the sloppy e-mails described by the OP. Key point: don't assume a student is lazy if that could potentially disadvantage a motivated but 'uneducated' student.

Answer 4

What can professors do to encourage properly written email messages from students?

A rather straightforward option, that I have seen various professors follow, is to either delay answers to non-properly written e-mail messages, or to outright ignore the respective e-mails.

One precondition that I see for this is that it needs to be clearly communicated to the respective students that this is what is going to happen (i.e., to be on the safe side, it should at least be clearly stated next to the professor's e-mail address on their website).

Advantages:

• The reaction (or lack thereof) has a direct effect. Some less motivated students might have a stance like "I don't care whether Professor XYZ complains about my writing style; as long as I get an answer to my request, everything is fine.", and with the (non-)reaction outlined in this answer, the point is that they do not get an answer to their request unless they send their request in an acceptable way.

Disadvantages:

• This is implicit feedback. A student might be genuinely unaware of the degree at which they are breaching professional protocol by writing all e-mails like text messages to their best friend. I consider this a weak disadvantage, given that
  • students are young adults who should have had plenty of opportunity (including respective lessons at school ...) to learn how to properly write letters and
  • a university is generally a "pull" system; if the attempt to communicate was inappropriate, it is the student's responsibility to find out why, not the university's to readily deliver a step-by-step tutorial for something that should already be known and that can realistically be found out rather easily. Of course, it might be easy for the professor to provide instructions on how to properly write an e-mail, or even specifically point out the issues with a particular student's e-mail. However, teaching such basic text editing skills is not the purpose of a university, it should be known at least from highschool. Moreover, readily serving a correction seems detrimental, given that it does not help students develop into autonomous people who fix their own problems instead of waiting for someone else to fix them.

Answer 5

I have a colleague whose signature looks like:

Dr. John Doe
Thing I Like to Study Department
University of this Country

(123) 456-7890
[email protected]

Hello students: let's communicate formally. Let's start our e-mails with a greeting,
make use of a meaningful subject line, and write in complete sentences. I think this
will make our collaboration deeper and richer. Join me. -Dr. D

Answer 6

A professor should present a "Code of Conduct" to the students, along with the agenda, that explains expectations for all things like homework submission, communication, testing, labs, etc. If email is something that you expect students to treat at a formal level, they need to be told that explicitly. Some professors are very sloppy in there own style of presentation and communication. So, it is helpful for students to know all the expectations and acceptable class culture. Make sure they know that unsatisfactory attempts will not be given complete review, and will be given a generic response.

Answer 7

We now offer a 2 credit required course in professional communication, but it doesn't happen early enough.

The best solution I've found is that if I don't find a student's communications to be suitable, I respond to whatever their inquiry is as best I can, and include some statement telling them that I expect them to communicate with me at a professional level.

Meeting requests are a source of frequent problems.

Student: I hope you had a nice weekend. Can we meet?

Me: Sure. What would you like to meet about.

S: I'd like to drop a course

M: What course would you like to drop?

Now, we've just had four emails instead of two, and I still have no concept of whether a meeting is really necessary or if any prep work on my part is required. If our timing is off, and the student and I are out of sync with respect to working hours, this can delay a meeting (which usually doesn't need to happen in the first place) by days.

For meeting requests in particular, I demand all the info up front, because I don't like being surprised at a meeting by needing to run down information and then have another meeting. I explain to the student that there are rarely meetings that I don't put 15 minutes of preparation into, and that if they tell me all those details, we could save a whole lot of time.

Lately, during orientation, our undergrad committee chair offers a bit of coaching on effective email communication with advisers. I hope it helps.

Answer 8

I'm a PhD student, so my emails are usually to superiors; I do expect, though, to receive quite a few emails when the TA-ing season starts. I also expect that a few emails will be at a similar level to your example.

This question raises a bit of a conundrum for me. I have two options (although many more would arise if I let common courtesy slide).

1. I could ignore their lack of effort and just answer their question to my own standards. I am there to help them with physics, not language; my authority is negligible anyway, and I'm certainly not going to try and assert any such authority by telling them how they can or can not communicate with me. Heck, Im getting paid to help them, so I should probably stick to that.
2. Whilst formalities are a fairly strange construct, they do exist and they do signify a level of respect (one could argue that this is equivalent to a piece of arbitrary cloth tied in a certain way around one's neck signifies professionalism - it's just something that we kind of stick with). And, as advanced as our species likes to think it is, we want to feel respected. If I were to neglect my duty to inform the student that, whilst undergraduate learning is a nice sandbox where they're free to make mistakes, contacting more important people (future PhD supervisors, potential employers, authors of relevant papers, etc) in a manner which could be deemed inappropriate can, plausibly, have some pretty harsh consequences.

This does go on the assumption that their email is actually legible and they arent actually being offensive. If it isn't, or if there are possible ambiguities in any questions, that's a great opportunity: reply, with the appropriate level of formality, and point out any interpretation issues and request that their email be reworded more explicitly.

Answer 9

A colleague of mine, in the classes she teaches, allocates a certain percentage of the grade for "professionalism". Students who send poorly written emails like your example will have points deducted in that category, on the grounds that it is unprofessional.

(Other possible deductions: asking questions that are clearly answered in the syllabus, having a phone ring in class, etc.)

Answer 10

Other than introducing a course on Academic communication, as some of answers mention, you could recommend a book on Academic communication to students, such as this one. From my perspective, it has a lot of advice that your students may find relevant.

Next, there are parts of the netiquette that everyone shares, and there are parts that differ from professor to professor. Your personal preferences on email communication with students should go in the syllabus of your course.

Answer 11

Your email communicates to me that you're still living in high school. Please try to communicate to your professors more formally. This exercises not only your ability to form well-crafted sentences, but conveys knowledge to your professors that you respect their time and their craft.

If the latter is not the case, then you won't be able to depend on timely (or perhaps even proper) answers in return.

[Edit: Sorry I can't but help keep that first sentence. Rewrite as proper.]