I am coming to believe that specific required assignments are the only way to get students to carry class discussion on to email. Even when I required that they subscribe to a listserv specifically for our class, there was about 1/5 of the class who held out till near the end of the term. Because we met once a week, I critiqued papers by email; even then, students often did not check their mail. Their participation was part of their class participation grade; next time I would give one segment of their grade for computer participation.
In this term's class, I've left it as extra credit and only 2 of 25 have subscribed. In site of the media hype, there is a great deal of resistance to the electronic classroom, in my so 'umble experience. Generally about 15% of students make use of email to ask me questions, etc.

Bette-B Bauer
U of Oregon

This is a little off the topic of how to effectively integrate the use of email into a syllabus, but I thought it might be of use. There is a Unix program called hypermail which will allow you to keep a web-accessible, hypertextual archive of an email discussion, sortable and viewable (at the user's discretion) by author, subject, date, or thread. You may need the assistance of someone with sysadmin powers to set this up, but I think it's well worth it. The source for information on the program (and for the program itself) is:

hypermail website
If you'd like to look at an example of what it can do, you can go to:
searching a mailbox by thread
John Unsworth

John Unsworth wrote to recommend the use of Hypermail, a UNIX utility which tranforms email into Web pages which are sortable. I second his recommendation: the combined use of class email aliases with Hypermail on the Web is the most powerful course management tool I've seen to date.

Doug Smith
Professor, English
Cal Poly
San Luis Obispo

I've had the same experience. But this time, I'm giving a few pop assignments which will only come to the students by email. We'll see what happens then, when they have no alternative but to deal with the challenge electronically.

Robin Kornman

I am coming to believe that specific required assignments are the only way to get students to carry class discussion on to email. Even when I required that they subscribe to a listserv specifically for our class, there was about 1/5 of the class who held out till near the end of the term. Because we met once a week, I critiqued papers by email; even then, students often did not check their mail. Their participation was part of their class participation grade; next time I would give one segment of their grade for computer participation.
In this term's class, I've left it as extra credit and only 2 of 25 have subscribed. In site of the media hype, there is a great deal of resistance to the electronic classroom, in my so 'umble experience. Generally about 15% of students make use of email to ask me questions, etc.

Bette-B Bauer
U of Oregon

I have never required my students to use email in my courses, but my students and I use it extensively in all my courses. I usually distribute a class list with both phone numbers and email addresses for each student. (the Univ. of Oregon requires a signed release form from each student before I can do this.) I also make a web page of the class from which students can send each other mail. I have a tight teaching schedule and maintain close contact with each of my students; email, I find, is the best way for me to meet the individualized needs of my students. If they need to make an appt, arrange for a letter of recommendation, an early or late exam, it is easier for me to arrange this from my computer in my office than after class when we are rushed for time. Once they establish an initial contact, it is easy to suggest they could send drafts, outlines, and even their final projects via email.
Since I teach foreign language, I encourage them to write in Norwegian, and offer them information on how to subscribe to email lists (such as NorWord that connects them with other students learning the same language) and newsgroups. One of the advantages to introducing email and educational technology in foreign language courses, is that I have contact with students for a year or two; and can introduce ed tech gradually. I would also argue that there are many similarities between teaching a foreign language and teaching electronic communication: that the pedagogical principles of teaching students a "foreign" language are quite similar to those of teaching students to communicate electronically.

Zoe Borovsky
Dept of Germanic
University of Oregon

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