IMPROVING INSTRUCTOR RESPONSE TO STUDENT E-MAILS USING TEMPLATE AND REMINDER INTERVENTIONS

Abstract

Student e-mails without the student’s name, message, file attachment, etc may impede a timely and thorough instructor response. To help resolve this issue, we apply template and reminder interventions to improve student e-mail format defined as the degree of agreement between a student’s e-mail format and an instructor provided template. A pilot study (Study 1) employing a sample of 36 online undergraduate marketing students concluded that instructor supplied e-mail format template significantly improved student e-mail format. Additional refinements were examined in Study 2 to test three instruction formats (verbal, separated graphic and verbal, and integrated graphic and verbal) and two levels of instruction reminders (once and three times) using a sample of 78 online undergraduate marketing students. Results show that integrated graphic and verbal instructions, and independently, reminder announcements improve student e-mail format. Results from the two studies are discussed in terms of pedagogical benefits for the marketing educator.