Email your students, because it matters

By Kate Cammack, CfT Co-Director

TLDR: A welcome email is a quick, simple opportunity to begin building your faculty-student relationship before our semester even begins. Do it this week!

Students are looking for connection

You may have seen the recent Inside HigherEd article about students wanting to matter on campus. They want to have peers and faculty who know them well, who will notice if they’re struggling, and who will help them contemplate their purpose and role in the world. They also notice if and where student wellbeing seems like a “shared responsibility” – not just the purview of isolated groups or centers.

What can we do to connect with our students, before the semester even begins?

A small act can make a big difference

Legg & Wilson (2009) found that sending a quick, pre-semester email:

• enhanced students’ motivation to be in the course;
• improved students’ attitude toward the course;
• increased students’ perceptions of the instructor, including
  • how prepared they were
  • how clearly they presented material
  • whether they’d recommend them to a friend

All of these positive effects were seen on the first day of class. 

Some effects seemed to be longer-lasting – students who received the email were less likely to withdraw from the course, compared to students who did not receive an email.

Finally, male students didn’t respond positively to the many exclamation points used by the female professor in her email. Ridiculous!!!!!!!

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!

Why is this important? 

You’re signaling approachability and care, which is important for students’ motivation to learn, attitudes, and even cognitive work (e.g., meta-analysis 1, meta-analysis 2).

You’re reducing uncertainty and/or trepidation about you and your course. Students experience many emotions – including hope and pride, loss and dislocation, and anxiety – as they transition (back) to college. Let’s contribute actively to the positive emotions, and lessen the negative emotions, where we can.

You’re starting to build a supportive faculty-student relationship, which is positively associated with students’ persistence (this).

You’re helping cultivate students’ sense of belonging, which is important for academic & social success (this)

Brightspace courses open this week…so now’s the time!

It will only take a few minutes!