Kate Cammack, CfT Co-Director
As our inboxes slowly start filling and our self-imposed email boundaries are tested, I wanted to tout the value of email – more specifically, one single email that only takes a few minutes to send and can pay dividends throughout the semester.
Many of us have heard that sending a welcome email, prior to the first day of classes, is a good practice, but might not know where that recommendation came from. Legg & Wilson (2009) explored the impact of a brief, welcoming email sent by a professor to her students one week before the semester began. Students in her introductory psychology course were randomly assigned to receive the welcoming email or not. The researchers then assessed students’ motivation and attitudes toward the instructor and course on the first day of class, at midterm, and on the last day of class.
Key Take-Aways
- On the first day of class, students who received a welcoming email were more likely to:
- report being motivated to be in the class
- see the professor as “an excellent teacher” (yes, incredibly, just on Day 1!)
- rate the instructor’s overall effectiveness higher
- recommend the instructor to a friend
- rate the instructor as more prepared
- say the instructor presented material clearly
- have a better attitude toward the course
- Female email recipients had higher motivation and more positive perceptions of the course throughout the semester.
- Email recipients were less likely to withdraw from the course (92% retention) that non-recipients (71%)
- Final grades didn’t differ between groups, but students who dropped the course (more common in the no-email group) might have performed worse.
- Male students didn’t respond positively to the many exclamation points used by the female professor in her email (I lament this finding, as a generally enthusiastic person myself…!)
FWIW here’s the email that the email-group received:
- “My name is Janie Wilson, and I will be your professor for Introduction to Psychology in the Spring. I want to take this opportunity to say Welcome! I love teaching this course, and I hope you enjoy it too. I’ll be lecturing using PowerPoint, but I will also try to spice things up a bit by doing demonstrations, showing brief film clips, and getting you involved. I also promise to be respectful of you, so you should always feel free to ask any questions in class or come see me outside of class if you’d prefer. I also promise to be fair. To me that means treating all students the same rather than having favorites! Thank you for signing up for this course! I will try very hard to keep you awake!”
I imagine we could all find ways to adjust & update the language of this particular email. That said, keep in mind that the positive effects that the researchers found were a result of this email. Imagine what could be possible with your own, improved version!
How This Might Inform Your Teaching
Send a brief, welcoming email before the semester starts! It takes a few minutes, and will help build rapport, motivation & buy-in from the first day of class through the rest of the semester.
For more, please check out the full paper:
- Legg AM & Wilson JH (2009) Email from professor enhances student motivation & attitudes. Teaching of Psychology, 36: 205–211
Interested in contributing to SoTL Corner with a summary of a SoTL article? Please contact Kate at kmcammac@sewanee.edu