“I am a tenured professor. My provost asked me to evaluate an overseas colleague. I did so, responding in an e-mail message. The provost then contacted the colleague, quoting my report and attributing it to me. I was stunned: such evaluations are assumed to be confidential. When I complained, the provost replied, “If it’s in an e-mail, it’s public,” adding that our colleague deserves to know what is being said about him and by whom. Your opinion? J.H., NEW YORK”

What do you think? I am surprised that the provost thought that email being the mode of communication, somehow changes the fact that it is still an evaluation. Who is right?

E‐mail excludes the multiple nonlinguistic cues and gestures that facilitate face‐to‐face communication. How, then, should interaction in a text‐based context be understood? The authors analyze the problems and solutions experienced by a research panel that communicated over e‐mail and face‐to‐face for 18 months, evaluating both kinds of exchanges alongside survey and interview data. Semiotic and linguistic theory is used to expose essential properties associated with the successful communication of meaning in each context. The authors find that e‐mail requires the cultivation of new techniques for specifically conveying the “pragmatic information” that connects the meaning of words to their users. Such information is assigned in e‐mail through the use of what are termed emphatic, referential, and characterizing semiotic tactics. These tactics are also evident in sustained online interactions studied by other researchers. This theoretical vocabulary represents an alternative to the dominant sociological characterization of e‐mail as an inferior substitute for face‐to‐face interaction.

The full article can be reached here. Thoughts?

The two pieces of technology that really blew me away, however, were a printing device called Presto, and an enlarger.  The enlarger looks like a combination TV/overhead projector.  If there is something my grandmother wants to read, she places it on the machine, and it appears enlarged on the screen.  This enables her to read everything from the directions on prescription bottles, to her favorite philosophical texts, to emails from her grandchildren.

That’s right–my 99 year old grandmother loves email!  My grandmother is unable to use a computer, but we can send her emails through the Presto machine, which looks like a regular HP printer.  Over the weekend that I visited, daily horoscopes arrived, and several birthday wishes.  After the emails are printed, all she has to do is walk them over to her enlarger and boom–she is able to remain connected with friends, family, and the outside world.

The best communication I have with my grandmother, however, is decidedly low-tech.  It is face-to-face, looking her directly in the eyes, squeezing her hands, and telling her that I love her.  However, because we live a thousand miles away from each other, and the phone has become an impossible barrier, email has to suffice.  As soon as I got home from my trip, I sent her an email filled with photographs of our visit.

As part of my dissertation, I asked employed workers how often they used laptops and wireless email devices to communicate with work-related colleagues during non-work time. In other words, above and beyond “normal” working hours. I found that, on average, respondents logged on for about 30 minutes before work, 1 – 1.5 hours after work, and 1.5 – 2 hours on their days off. Maybe that doesn’t sound so bad at first … but if you consider a standard five-day workweek, this translates into an additional 10 – 14 hours of additional labor that is being conducted outside of the office. It adds up quickly! Evidence that the 40-hour workweek is a thing of the past.

to: john.mccain@maverickymaverick.gov
from: dmccourt@youhavegottobekiddingme.edu [Sent On Behalf Of American Public]

subject: extension?

Dear John,

While I sympathize with the demands of balancing both legislative and campaign issues, I cannot, in accord with historical policy, grant your request for an extension on the debate. Dean’s excuses can only be granted in the cases of health or personal emergencies, and would need to be submitted to me in writing.  A physician’s note is also acceptable.

Regards,
Dana McCourt

---

On Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 12:00pm, John McCain wrote:

sorry to bother you and i know this request is late but i have been really busy and i want to call an emergency meeting with the president and understanding all the material is taking up a lot of my time so i find myself woefully underprepared and i am throwing myself on your mercy. can i get an extension over the weekend on the debate so i can present my best work to you? or should i get a dean’s excuse?

thanks,

john

1. “On email, people aren’t quite themselves.  They are angrier, less sympathetic, less aware, more easily wounded, even more gossipy and duplicitous.  Email has a tendency to encourage the lesser angels of our nature” (qtd. in Malcolm).

2.  When you accidentally send an email containing negative comments about a person to that very person, do not use email to express your apology. “Just because we have email we shouldn’t use it for everything,” authors suggest.

3.  “If you don’t consciously insert tone into an email, a kind of universal default tone won’t automatically be conveyed.  Instead, the message written without regard to tone becomes a blank screen onto which the reader projects his own fears, prejudices and anxieties” (qtd. in Malcolm).  Malcolm then summarizes the authors’ suggestion to deal with this impersonal aspect of email —  ”a program of unrelenting niceness.  Keep letting your correspondent know how much you like and respect him, praise and flatter him, constantly demonstrate your puppyish friendliness, and stick in exclamation points (and sometimes even smiling face icons) wherever possible.’”

But exclamation points are really just shortcuts, which we must take because we simply can’t afford to do otherwise with the heavy volume of emails every day, the authors and Malcolm suggest.  Does email then propel weak writing?  At the end of her review, Malcolm poses a related question about young users of email: “Will their childish babbling evolve into decent writing?  Does writing a lot lead to writing well?”  My sense is if we write badly and do so often, we may lose or have a hard time acquiring the skills for writing well. 

With the tremendous number of electronic mediums for communication, perhaps we take shortcuts much too often, and so do our students.  Is there a way to discourage shortcuts or simply bad writing using the very medium that promotes it? Next time I teach composition, I will probably create prompts that would encourage students to correspond via email. Afterwards, in class the sender and the recipient can share their perceptions of the e-mail’s tone.  I think this use of a familiar and favorite medium might be a good way to help beginning writers develop a sense of audience, grow more sensitive to their choice of tone, and perhaps become stronger writers, and not just on email.

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home, By David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, [is] a slender, literate volume that is positioned as a Strunk and White for e-mail. Shipley edits the New York Times Op-Ed page, and Schwalbe is editor in chief of Hyperion Books.

Of the ‘manuals’ he mentions, the one whose approach sounded most useful to me was Mark Frauenfelder’s Rule the Web.  He describes it as “a miscellany of mostly free services, tools and tips for managing e-mail and blogs and feeds and photos and music and videos” and discloses that he contributed one paragraph (uncompensated).  He also said he learned at least six things from the book, which is not bad considering it’s his job.

If communication has any major outcomes at all, it certainly must be one of fostering collaboration. Indeed, many of the posts on this blog deal with collaboration technologies.

Peter McAfee’s article asks whether we have the right technologies. Perhaps, but I also wonder whether we have the right change management processes in place to provoke and/or incent the use of the technologies.

For me, the catchy quote from McAfee’s article is “While all knowledge workers surveyed used e-mail, 26% felt it was overused in their organization, 21% felt overwhelmed by it and 15% felt it actually diminished their productivity.”

Yikes!

Everyday, I must obsessively check two email accounts and, time permitting, I check six other email accounts. I say “must” because if I didn’t check these accounts frequently, the amount of email will reach an overwhelming magnitude. Each account has a purpose, and each account seems to be swimming in its own madness that doesn’t have a method. If only there were a show that promised to help me organize my web and computer clutter.

When we think about technology and Writing Across the Curriculum or Communication Intensive Instruction, we try to think of creative ways to infuse communication instruction with technology. We turn to blogs and email lists and discussion groups and services such as BlackBoard. Every addition adds to the bulk of our email inboxes and the sites we bookmark and visit everyday. With more technology comes more reading, more viewing, more commenting, more time in front of our computers, less time doing work that is–and, yes, this still exists–paper-based.

When I was teaching composition, I once got a paper from a student that was written entirely in the language of text messaging. Another student of mine tried desperately all semester to use her Sidekick in class by hiding it in her purse. She even tried to convince me that it was her electronic dictionary. At the CUNY WAC orientation in September, someone suggested that we get students to use more technology in the classroom by asking them to do an assignment in the form of a text message. I thought to myself: My students didn’t need help with using technology in the classroom–they needed help knowing when to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate uses of technology, how to organize their technology, how to streamline their technology, and how to keep technology from keeping them from non-technology based work that they still have to do.

I’m assuming that these students will grow up to be professionals, will enter into a life that demands eight or more email accounts, subscription lists, discussion groups, and more web-based services that have yet to be invented.

Technology has given us the tools to be creative in communication intensive instruction, but it hasn’t necessarily given us the tools to make our lives easier.

When I was teaching composition, I was told that integrating my students into academic life was part of my job; I was told that because the instructor is in many ways a liaison between the student and the college, I had to help them become academically responsible, even if this meant helping them learn simple things such as why they shouldn’t sleep in class, why they should come to class, why they should take notes, where they should go when they have a problem with registration or financial aid. At some colleges, there are services or orientation events that help students learn these skills.

I’m not advocating that we use less technology. As much as I bemoan the state of my inboxes, I love checking my email. I’m just thinking that sometime between getting my first email account and today, I missed a step.
If we ask our students and instructors to use more technology, to use technology creatively, to make technology-based communication part of the curriculum, do we also have a responsibility to provide them with skills to help them become more “technologically responsible?” Does the state of our inboxes affect our mental states? Would our academic lives be easier if our inboxes, bookmarks, and other technology-based communications were organized? What would a technology “De-Clutter Plan” look like?

I can definitely relate to the gap in the workplace but the issue I want to bring up is not so an issue of gap between old school and new generation but rather an issue of workplace gap where people are so involved in technology which allows them to do more in less time that often times there is no company spirit or friendly workplace environment. People are getting lazy to be human. Now its too hard to stop at someones desk and talk but most common way is to send an e-mail to person who sits right next to you.

She describes what I consider to be the dark side of technology, the decline in critical social relationships. Furthermore, and perhaps more worrying, is the tendency to believe that if you have shot off an e-mail you have completed your responsibilities with respect to communication. How many times have many of us encountered the phrase; “But I sent you an e-mail?” Or; “Sorry, I did’t see your e-mail?”

Technology has become a convenient scapegoat for our failure to accept the responsibility that communication is more than message flow, it is achieving understanding.

Then The New York Times addressed the phenomena of employee bloggers a few weeks back. And now, it has turned its sights to other embarrassing materials students leave scattered about online. Apparently, students post all kinds of embarrassing things on myspace.com, Friendster, and Facebook, not to mention personal blogs. It’s a reminder that we need, somehow, somewhere, to address students about these kinds of issues. I’ve always tried to do my little bit to support careers services by mentioning to students in my classes that they might want to have a professional email address to use with professors, and those who hire interns and employees, and frankly, anyone involved in one’s education or work career. It is not always readily apparent to students that “hotgirl357@hotmail” or even “RoyalsFan69@yahoo” is maybe not the best email to use in professional settings: they’re memorable, sure, but for the wrong reasons. Being a Royals fan is probably not going to lose students any interviews, but don’t they want email-ees to know the name of the person the message is coming from? When students are reminded of these issues, they usually get it.

But there’s more than embarrassing email addresses at stake. We should be encouraging students early and often to think about what they’re putting out there with their names attached. As this University of Illinois student who was looking for a job (who was cited in the Times article “For Some, Online Persona Undermines Resume”) discovered too late, students should consider who might be reading:

At Facebook, a popular social networking site, the executive found the candidate’s Web page with this description of his interests: “smokin’ blunts” (cigars hollowed out and stuffed with marijuana), shooting people and obsessive sex, all described in vivid slang.

It did not matter that the student was clearly posturing. He was done.

“A lot of it makes me think, what kind of judgment does this person have?” said the company’s president, Brad Karsh. “Why are you allowing this to be viewed publicly, effectively, or semipublicly?”

If they want to post less-than-professional descriptions of themselves on Facebook, myspace, or otherwise, students should think about the usefulness of pseudonyms.
They’re good enough for Ivan Tribble at the Chronicle, after all.

That’s the no-brainer, right?  Don’t attach your name to anything you don’t want your name attached to.  But the issue becomes murkier–and this is where Ivan Tribble invited all kinds of argument–when what students or employees or academics are putting online is more-or-less professional.  At that point, is Tribble right?  Is blogging still a no-no?  What rules should we follow when using our names online?  Assuming we’re sharing our views on higher-level issues than smokin’ blunts, and we’re not dragging anyone’s name through the mud, at what point does any online writing cross the line to become too personal?  At what point do we expose something we should not?

At first, it struck me as another article about how technology and education are a bad mix. Usually these are about school districts that have banned student blogs, because students reveal too much personal information online, or about how IM-ing is allegedly ruining students’ ability to spell properly. The general tone of this genre is negative. Some of it is true, but a lot of it is sensational.

But at closer look, I saw this article as having some interesting insights: first, that we need to train students to communicate over email. And it does not have to take up a huge chunk of time. But what could be more relevant in communication-intensive courses than to spend a moment on what kind of communication is appropriate? At Baruch, where we’re preparing students largely for the world of business, teaching students to email professors is relevant to teaching them how to interact with people in companies they may work with.

Professors cited in the article complained that students were emailing to ask what kind of notebook they should buy, to request paper drafts be read days before the final draft was due, or to give excuses for absences (the example was not a serious one, but a student taking the day off class to play with his child).

Though they had many complaints about email content and delivery,

Still, every professor interviewed emphasized that instant feedback could be invaluable. A question about a lecture or discussion “is for me an indication of a blind spot, that the student didn’t get it,” said Austin D. Sarat, a professor of political science at Amherst College.

College students say that e-mail makes it easier to ask questions and helps them to learn. “If the only way I could communicate with my professors was by going to their office or calling them, there would be some sort of ranking or prioritization taking place,” said Cory Merrill, 19, a sophomore at Amherst. “Is this question worth going over to the office?”

But student e-mail can go too far, said Robert B. Ahdieh, an associate professor at Emory Law School in Atlanta. He paraphrased some of the comments he had received: “I think you’re covering the material too fast, or I don’t think we’re using the reading as much as we could in class, or I think it would be helpful if you would summarize what we’ve covered at the end of class in case we missed anything.”

Students also use e-mail to criticize one another, Professor Ahdieh said. He paraphrased this comment: “You’re spending too much time with my moron classmates and you ought to be focusing on those of us who are getting the material.”

Michael Greenstone, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he once received an e-mail message late one evening from a student who had recently come to the realization that he was gay and was struggling to cope.

Professor Greenstone said he eventually helped the student get an appointment with a counselor. “I don’t think we would have had the opportunity to discuss his realization and accompanying feelings without e-mail as an icebreaker,” he said.

A few professors said they had rules for e-mail and told their students how quickly they would respond, how messages should be drafted and what types of messages they would answer.

Meg Worley, an assistant professor of English at Pomona College in California, said she told students that they must say thank you after receiving a professor’s response to an e-mail message.

The bottom line is that professors just aren’t used to that much contact with students. And students are sometimes so comfortable with email as a quick and rough medium for communication, that they forgo the niceties of polite communication. It seems like some of the comments students were sharing according to the article (such as requests for feedback on drafts, or requests that material be handled more slowly or more quickly) might even help professors tweak their courses to better suit student needs.

As with classroom face-to-face interactions, it does not hurt to make the ground rules clear. It also doesn’t hurt to remind students of the amount of time it can take to type out answers to lots of questions–and that often a quick word at the end of class, or a quick phone call during office hours might be more efficient.

For professors who might want to share some emailing advice with students, say in a link from a course website, “How to email a professor,” from Orange Crate Art gets to many of the complaints in the NYT article.