I have had an e-mail account for almost 20 years now. Early on, it was primarily an alternative means of chatting with my friends, then a means of connecting to folks within my professional milieu. Now, as I'm sure you all are keenly aware from your own lives, e-mail has taken on a life of its own. It's become the primary channel for keeping up with friends, family, work, hobbies, and more.
As the role of e-mail has changed in my life (I'll keep this personal), the expectations associated with it have changed too. For instance, sometimes when I e-mail colleagues, I may not get a reply for a couple of days. Now, I'm a busy and thoughtful person, so I *should* know that it's not always possible to respond to e-mails immediately; I know I can't do it most of the time and don't want to do it just as often. Yet, I, like may of you I suspect, find myself expecting more immediate replies.
Why? What's changed? How are conventions for this particular communications medium developing and shifting? What boundaries and guidelines do we want to have for e-mail in our personal and/or professional lives?
E-mail has changed expectations in another way; in this case they're the expectations my students have. Generally, students seem to expect quick replies to e-mails (and hey, e-mail may not even be the right tool). Sometimes students are unhappy if I don't provide direct links to full-text resources that are available online or through databases. Often, students seem willing to write things in e-mails that they would never say to me aloud. My experiences are far from unique: my colleagues here and at Indiana would tell you many of the same things. In fact, college instructors across the country share these experiences.
I earned my MLS in 1992-1993. E-mail was not universally required. I still typed many of my assignments. I did not own a computer. Online databases or even CD-ROM databases were expensive luxuries. The World Wide Web was just starting. I mention all of these things as context. If I wanted to get a copy of a class syllabus, I waited until the first day of class or I looked at the 3-ring binder in the library to see what previous semesters' syllabi contained. If I wanted to ask an instructor something, I called him on the phone or made an appointment. If I wanted an article to use in a paper, I went to the library, located the journal in the stacks, and made a photocopy. If I missed class, I asked a friend for notes.
My expectations for the interaction between teachers and students, then, come in some measure from another time. I'm not a complete dinosaur: I've been teaching students at a distance since 1997; I made my first web page in 1995; I incorporated e-mail and the Web into high school projects in 1994. I sincerely like computers and the Internet and assorted other technologies.
What's the point of this post? Well, if you're not already having to ask these questions about your technology-mediated communications with a generation more technology-native than you are, you will. Start thinking now. What will your communications future look like? What expectations will you question?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I've definitely experienced the expectancy of an immediate response. When I don't get an immediate response, I think now where are they that they haven't responded to me yet.
When I was an undergrad in the early 1990s, I remember when a group of us wanted to get together we called each other on the regular phone. If I needed to talk to someone immediately, I had to use a pay phone. I honestly wonder how technology is changing us for the worse.
My aunt in Chicago recently set up her Mac video-chat. So we chatted one day, lots of fun, but she also uses it for her work with a co-worker in Canada. I signed in on Saturday, seeing her name, clicked on it, and I was denied!!! I suppose I could've just called her anyway, but seeing that she denied me a video chat I figured she was busy so I let it be. But still, I felt a little upset and disappointed, what's the use of innovative technology if people still don't want to be bothered all the time?? Just some thoughts and trying out a post through my gmail account.
We have this argument at home all the time about answering the phone!
My brother's friend that lives with my family (we have a complicated household) finds it very annoying when we don't answer the phone. I maintain that's what Caller ID and answering machines are for and hate it when the neighbor kids call 5 times in a row as I'm making dinner. Just because someone contacts me doesn't mean I'm obliged to communicate with them that instant.
No matter what medium you're dealing with it's easy to run into conflicting ideas about what the proper etiquette should be. At work I feel obliged to add more exclamation points and smiley faces to e-mails than may be completely professional, but I tend to use a business-like tone and want to diffuse any officiousness. It's an odd feeling to sit there questioning which would be worse, to come off as cutesy or stuffy, all based on the use of an exclamation point or emoticon.
Successful communication is always going to depend on some element of consideration for the other person, but it's getting harder and harder to do that as we deal with long-distance relationships. I don't know what people's schedules are like, whether they check e-mail continuously or once a week. This can be really hard for group projects and I'm learning it helps to get our preferences out there right away anytime I work with other students online.
As a teacher of many years, I am glike Carol in that I've seen a tremendous impact that technoloy has caused on my work environment. While I am not as tech savvy as I probably should be or would like to be, I do make an effort to be open to using new technologies as they become available. I am also interested to see how those technologies impact the lives and work of my students.
For example, when I first started teaching, the only way to submit an essay was via the typewriter. It was a challenge for most and a pain when an error had to be changed. Now, students have such wonderful tools at their fingertips - spell check, a thesaurus, different font sizes and styles. But I often wonder, as now when I'm grading essays, why they don't take advantage of those tools more. Is it because they are too lazy or just don't know how to utilize all the advantages that the technology has to offer?
Despite all of the tools available, students don't seem to be meeting the required standards in writing or in reading. The National Writing Project has decided to fund some additional programs to help integrate literacy into the classroom. They have decided to expand literacy by offering teachers additional training. Will librarians be part of this movement? Hopefully so because the article states that the greatest challenge "is no longer learning to read. Rather, it is reading to learn." Students are not being well prepared to live in their adult environments.
As we learned in our first class, the four components of production, language, representation, and audience are the key means of communication. It will be interesting to see how the National Writing Project will direct the workshops to help teachers become more effective in teaching literacy and how these workshops will integrate the components. Here is a link to the site to learn more about the project: http://www.nwp.org/
Post a Comment