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Learning and Teaching
Instructors share techniques for avoiding email overload
Looking for ways to streamline email communication with your students to ensure they get the support they need and you avoid inbox overload? According to these instructors, small course design changes can have a big impact.
Making a more concise syllabus
By reimagining the traditional lengthy and detailed syllabus, physics lecturer and science associate dean Sarah Johnson reduced the volume of emails from students seeking basic course information.
“The traditional syllabus is not very accessible to students. There is often too much information and so students only read the first couple of lines of each paragraph. As a result, they often wind up emailing their instructors for information they could find themselves. To make my syllabus more student-friendly, I reduced the amount of content, increased the font size and added colour and visual elements to break up the text. I put the content that I removed from it into relevant sections in Canvas—it doesn’t all need to be in that one document. I have seen the number of emails from students about administrative issues like the test attendance policy go down significantly since I started using this version.”
Teaching students how to properly craft emails
For biomedical physiology and kinesiology lecturer Sabrina Lee, teaching her students how to write effective emails means that not only does she get less of them, but her students are gaining skills in self-efficacy and problem-solving.
"One the first day of class, I go over what makes an effective email in order to get the information that they need from me, or other professors. The prompts I tell them to consider include what don’t you understand, why don’t you understand it, and what have you already done to try and understand. I also ask them to think about the person receiving the email: what do they want from me (or others) to do—what action are they seeking out of this exchange. By engaging in this thought process, they often come to the realization that they can find the information they are seeking on their own, which reduces unnecessary emails. It reduces the back and forth emails because I understand how to help them and they gain more experience taking control over their learning. It also makes it easier for me to reply in a timely manner."
Lee adds that she hasn’t seen many of her students turn to using generative AI to write emails because what she focuses on with them is the thought process.
Flexibility in late policies and making quizzes optional
According to Beedie lecturer Matt Martell, another strategy for reducing email volume is giving students a grace period for assignments.
“I set a due date for my assignments and automatically give them an extra 48 hours to hand them in, no questions asked. Since I started doing this, the number of emails from students asking for extensions has significantly been reduced. Students have reacted positively to it. They like the early deadline with the flexibility of being able to submit late.”
Statistics and actuarial science lecturer Becky Wei Lin applies a similar approach to in-class quizzes.
“Random in-class quizzes are a great way to encourage engagement and attendance. The randomness ensures that overall bonus marks won't be too much but still maintains a good attendance rate. However, they can generate a lot of additional back-and-forth from students who may not have been in class that day. Therefore, it is important to make it clear that no accommodations will be made for missed quizzes. This is why all of my random in-class quizzes are what I call, "bonus" quizzes. This way, students know that although I don't accept submissions outside the allotted class time, it is okay if they miss a quiz because they are not mandatory. This approach helps eliminate many makeup request emails while still providing students with valuable learning opportunities.”