Practical Considerations for Email Assignments

Here are some things to keep in mind when designing email assignments:

• Have students submit assignments in the body of emails if formatting is not an issue. If formatting is necessary, set up the assignment using the Assignments tool in Blackboard. This way, you won't have to download anything, and you can simply archive the email you receive so you will always have it.
• At the beginning of the semester, clearly state your guidelines for students submitting assignments via email. Some guidelines might be:
  • Students must type in the word(s) you specify for the Subject line in their email. This allows you to easily identify assignments.
  • Students cannot use acronyms, such as BTW (By the way), IMHO (In my humble opinion), in assignment submissions via email.
  • Students can only send certain types of files as attachments. For example, they can send Microsoft Word files and JPEGs because you have programs that can open up those files. But they cannot send WordPerfect files because you don't have that program.
• Clearly write your assignment so there is no student confusion.
• Explicitly state your objective for the assignment.
• Tell students to write their paper in a plain text editor, such as Notepad or TextEdit, then save it to their computer for record-keeping purposes. Copying and pasting from a plain text editor into Blackboard works better than copying and pasting from Microsoft Word.
• Post some example email assignment submissions as models so students can see what's a good submission and what's not.
• If you are using email, create a folder(s) and filters in your email program to automatically move specific emails into.
• You will have to add an item into your Grade Center in Blackboard, label it, and enter the points possible for the assignment. You will also have to manually enter the students' scores when you are finished grading.
  
  
  When you are ready to give feedback to the submissions, consider these things:
  
  
• When you reply to the email, make sure you differentiate your comments from the student's original work. You can do this by typing your comments in all CAPS, bold, by setting your comments off with astericks, or by any other distinguishing method. Again, when you reply, let the student know his score.
• Let the student know his or her score in your reply.
• Have some generic comments prepared in a separate file so you don't have to keep typing the same thing into various student submissions. By copying and pasting, you'll save yourself some time.