English 1006
Prompt #30
31 October 2013
Some housekeeping issues; changing gears
Postings, emails, and writing with the reader in mind
I've been struck by how often online writing (emails and forum
postings, for example) is done with almost no attention to the
fact that someone is going to be reading it. This comes up now
because I've had a number of emails with questions about the
records page or the midterm evaluation process, and have in fact,
I think, lost a couple because they looked like spam rather than
emails from someone in the course. When you write anything, part
of the process should be to be aware of how it's going to appear
to your reader, and what you are assuming your reader knows, and
doesn't know.
For example, an email identified in an inbox as from
hijkl@stu.ca,
with no subject line (or one that doesn't say what the email is
about), may quite possibly be ignored (for example, I get lots of
such emails that are mass mailings from spammers, and are filtered
out of my inbox). Even if the reader figures out who it's from and
what it's about she has formed an opinion of the writer based on
the assumption that the writer's not particularly skillful or
considerate. So, here's a way to fix that: send yourself an email
(if you have an offcampus mail account, send it from your STU
address to that account) and then look at it. If it doesn't have
your name on it, or if it has a form of your name that you don't
use, you can go back to the STU email system and change it to look
the way you want it to. Similarly, once you know that your email
has already identified you, you know that you don't have to say in
the text who you are; your reader already knows that.
Subject lines, like titles on forum postings, are another
situation where you should think about your reader. The more
specific they can be, generally, the better: "English 1006"
doesn't tell me very much, or let me decide whether the email is
likely to be immediately important: "missing class today" or
"error in the records" is a great deal of help.
"Salutations" are a more complicated matter, and email hasn't
solved that problem. (In the olden
days, we used to start letters with something like "Dear Russ,"
-- even if Russ wasn't especially dear.) It's partly a
matter of manners, and nobody's agreed on what the appropriate
convention is. I use something like "Russ --" at the beginning, to
signal that it's an email to one person, but people use different
ways to open, and often they don't use anything at all, just
start. The same applies to signatures ("Yours truly" died with the
postal paper letter). Again, lots of people don't use anything.
(Nothing, by the way, is preferable to "Dear Professor" or "Dr.
Hunt." Or perhaps I should say that almost anything is preferable
to those salutations.)
Postings on Moodle or other online forums have the same general
issues: it's important to know how it appears to your reader. One
thing you should do, if you haven't, is to adjust your Moodle
settings ("My profile settings" is a menu item on the left of your
home page) so that they display your name as you want it
displayed, and that your email address as shown there is your STU
address. Another is to use titles the way you would use Subject
lines in an email. It's especially important in forums where
people are going to be reading a number of responses to one
message, choosing which ones to read from a list. It's also useful
as an "advance organizer," telling the reader what she should be
looking for.
Finally, if you email me about an error in the records, make sure
to say exactly what the error is and where I can find the
uncounted posting or whatever it is. As I've said, I do make
mistakes and I'm happy to correct them, but the easier you can
make it for me the quicker the record will be fixed. Bear in mind,
though, that in general I look for concrete evidence, and that's
what's recorded. If you don't sign a worksheet, for instance, it
won't be counted that you participated: it's signing that matters.
Similarly with online postings: if they're there, and date-stamped
before the deadline, they count. They need to be in the records
eventually, but what matters is whether they were done, correctly
and by the deadline, or not.
Right now
First, we'll end class early today
to give you a chance to go online and do two things:
First, log on to your STU email and make sure that it's set up
as you want, and that you can send email from it to me (send it
to hunt@stu.ca, as usual). Do this before the end of the class period.
Also, log onto Moodle and make sure your settings are as you
want them.
And then: as we move back toward explicitly considering
the ways language works, I have something different to offer (and
something perhaps a bit appropriate to the day). It's what I
call a "sequenced reading." You'll find it here (there's a
link from the main course page, as well).
What you should do is budget some time -- I'm guessing under an
hour -- to read each section of the story and respond to it. It's
best if you do it all in one go. And for reasons that I think
might be clear, it would be best to do it today. So, in order for
it to count as a completed task, do it before you go out trick or
treating (or whatever else you do to celebrate the eve of All
Saints' Day) tonight. Please remember to sign each response before
you click "Submit" (I'm going to try to get the responses back to
people on Tuesday, when we'll discuss the process and the text).
Continuing the midterm process
If you have already done a revised learning reflection, great.
If you haven't (or if you haven't done a reflection at all, and
intend to), I'm extending the deadline. I've had a couple of
requests to do this, and because it's unlikely that I'll get to
them before Saturday, it makes no sense to insist that they be
done now. Friday night is fine (by the way, I'm not counting
them as a task completed, since as I've said, they're meant to
be optional: what I did was to count them instead of the weekly
learning journal entry).
Over the weekend, I'm going to be reading the final versions of
the learning reflections, and learning, myself, about what's
been working and what hasn't. I'm also, starting next week,
going to do a short online anonymous feedback survey, and begin
scheduling individual conferences with students to discuss the
term so far; there will be a prompt about all this next week.
Go to the
previous prompt
Go to the next prompt
Go to the list of prompts
Go to the main working site for English 1006G