Over the past few weeks, I have read a number of articles—and the comments that followed them—bemoaning the poor quality of student e-mails. The complaints include lack of appropriate salutations, informality, poor grammar, arrogance, disrespect, meaningless or nonexistent subject lines, and so forth. Yet, during the past week, as I read e-mail from my students, I rarely encountered any of these problems.

Each week, I received hundreds of e-mails from students. The subject line for nearly 100% of the e-mails begin with the course number, the subject of the message, and the student’s name. The body of most e-mails my students send to me begin with “Dear Dr. Berg,” have a well written message that is articulate and grammatically correct, and end with the student’s name. The professionalism demonstrated by the e-mail is typically excellent.

So why are my students’ e-mails so markedly different than the e-mails that seem to be more typically received by my colleagues? The answer is simple. Instead of bemoaning my student’s lack of skill, I teach them the skills they need for success.

I treat e-mail the same way in which I treat other assignments. I do not assume that students are adept at the skills they need to succeed in the courses I teach prior to being taught those skills in the class. As a result, I design a series of assignments that allow them to practice, get feedback, learn from their mistakes, and improve.

I do include a section on e-mail guidelines in the syllabus, but I know that students do not learn a skill from simply reading about it. Therefore, an assignment I give on the first day of class asks students to write me an e-mail in proper format before the beginning of the second day of class. Although the directions are explicitly clear, some students still make errors. I provide feedback to those who make mistakes and allow them to resubmit the assignment.

As the semester continues, I incorporate other lessons about professionalism, e-mail etiquette, and the reasons why the guidelines I require were not arbitrarily developed. I tell students that when they begin their subject line with the course number, it gives their e-mail priority because I read student e-mail before answering other e-mail. Later, I explain how I sort e-mail by subject line and that e-mail that does not begin with the course number can easily be missed.

I frequently print out e-mails I receive from non-students and share them with my students; both good and bad examples. Once, I showed students an e-mail I had received from a publisher’s representative; an e-mail that began “Stephen.” Because of previous course instruction, my students were surprised that someone I did not know would begin an e-mail by addressing me by my first name. Then, students realized that the publisher’s representative had spelled my name wrong. When one student asked if I was going to decline his e-mail, I answered, “I have no obligation to him. I’m just going to delete it.”

Two weeks ago, I attended the Culinary Extravaganza at Schoolcraft College. The following day, I showed students a photograph of my father and Beth Kohler which had been taken at the event. My father is a donor to the college and Ms. Kohler is the college’s Director of Development. I told students about a conversation I had had with Ms. Kohler about professionalism when applying for scholarships. In our conversation, Ms. Kohler had mentioned that students sometimes lose scholarships to other students because of poorly written applications that include poor grammar, spelling errors, and a lack of capital letters. After I reported this conversation to my students, I commented about professionalism in e-mail.

I joke with students that I don’t require professionalism only because I am an egomaniac who wants to be a jerk. I require professionalism so that they can learn from their mistakes in my class where the stakes are low. Generally, the most serious consequence for making a mistake in my class is that the student gets a second chance. Outside my classroom—such as when students apply for scholarships, jobs, and so forth—there are no second chances. Because the job or scholarship would have already been given to someone else, a potential employer or selection committee is not going to respond, “It’s OK. Just resubmit your application.”

It is easy to complain that students should know how to act professionally. It is also easy to teach them how to conduct themselves as professionals as we cover our academic content. Not only does such instruction benefit our students, it also benefits us.

–Steven L. Berg, PhD

Photo Caption: Lorain Berg and Beth Kohler at the Schoolcraft College Foundation’s 2014 Culinary Extravaganza.

 

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