Setting standards

Standards that are not clearly communicated to students are not really standards at all. If email standards are important to the instructor and course, then the most appropriate place to communicate them is in the course syllabus (or, if the syllabus is online on a website, perhaps in a page linked from the syllabus).

Here is a possible statement for a course syllabus. Feel free to copy, paste, and edit it to fit your needs.

In this course, email communications between the instructor and the students are considered to be a professional exchange. As such, both sides are expected to meet professional standards in their messages. Although no one can be expected to be perfect, among the important standards are   Every effort should be made to use correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. The tone of the messages should be respectful and professional, not over-familiar. All messages should be signed so that the sender is clearly identifiable, even in a large class, where many people might have similar names or email addresses. The content of the messages should be clearly related to the content and procedures of the course. Messages should convey their meaning clearly and concisely. Senders should avoid adding flourishes and “bell and whistles” to their messages, as these are not always displayed correctly by the recipient’s software. Examples include background pictures, complex formatting, and other things. More complicated documents can be attached to a message instead. Although some leeway might be given at the beginning of the semester, students are expected to learn and follow these guidelines. Messages that violate them in important ways may be returned to the student for revision before the instructor deals with their content. Messages that are unreadable will always be returned.

Enforcing Standards

Standards must be enforced to be useful. Fortunately, most students will learn very quickly to follow them if they are described clearly and enforced consistently. If you set the standards, then you are responsible for sticking to them. Return messages that are too far out of compliance to be acceptable. When you do, explain why you are doing so and send the URL of the standards they are expected to follow. If there are problems with a message that aren’t serious enough to send back, mention them in your reply and explain that future messages with these problems will be returned. Over the course of the semester you can gradually tighten enforcement of the standards to make sure that students are adhering to them. Instructors who have these students in classes in the future will thank you.