Using E-mail Outside of Class to Enhance Discussions
Marva A. Barnett, Department of French and Teaching Resource Center

Advantages:

• To participate, students normally need to read and think about texts before class.
  
  
• Students' comments demonstrate some misunderstandings that you can then address in class as appropriate.
  
  
• You can better see and reward the depth of interpretation of some students who are quiet in class, or whose written language is better than their spoken language.
  
  
• E-mail can be a good way get students to admit what they don't understand about a text or assignment, as well as a chance for them to be analytical about what they are studying.
  
  
• Begun early, e-mail can help students create a rapport among themselves-and with you.
  
  
• Some students seem to feel more comfortable using e-mail than other modes to communicate about the course: for example, asking questions, commenting on how class is going, explaining what's going on in their lives that's affecting their work in class.

Realities, sometimes unpleasant:

• At some schools, some students have to make an effort to get to a terminal at which they can use e-mail.
  
  
• It takes time to read and respond to e-mail. (Still, many find that engaging individually with students a strikingly open form of communication and believe that knowing more about what more about students are thinking is an advantage.)
  
  
• Depending on class size and the frequency with which you ask students to write on e-mail, students may find that reading (and responding to) e-mail takes too much time.
  
  
• When teachers add e-mail discussion to their course without otherwise reducing the workload, students can sometimes be overwhelmed with work.

Suggestions:

• Make sure that your e-mail assignments are not overloading students.
  
  
• Consider having only some of the students write to the rest of the class for each assignment, just as teachers sometimes read only some students' journals each week.
  
  
• Timing can be difficult when not all students have access to e-mail where they live. It can help to make e-mail assignments early and encourage students to work ahead of schedule.
  
  
• To have serious e-mail discussions, you need to grade e-mail participation explicitly.