At any given moment in the semester my inbox will have several hundred items that I need to respond to. My goal in when it comes to emails is to minimize the time spent, while maximizing the number of students responded to. To that effect, if I can answer an email with a single word, I will. Some may interpret this as being rude. This is not my intention and I apologize in advance if my reply is upsetting.
I try not to look at my email too often, as my time is better spent creating content. Factor up to 24 hours for each round of emails. When composing emails, please keep this in mind, and structure your emails to reduce the number of required exchanges.
Any personal requests are generally rejected, instead contact the appropriate student body
Any personal requests/extensions/date changes will generally be answered with "No". As a rule I try not to give preferential treatment to anyone in my classes. If you believe your case warrants it, bypass me and contact the appropriate student body instead. As long as it doesn't create more work for me I will generally accept their recommendations. This is to keep my focus on creating content for the course and leave administrative tasks to supporting staff.
I've listed the main entities I've interacted with in the past, but this list should not be considered exhaustive.
Undergraduate Scholastic Standards Committee
https://www.qc.cuny.edu/academics/academicsenate/ussc/Pages/default.aspx
Office of Student Conduct
https://www.qc.cuny.edu/studentlife/services/studev/Pages/default.aspx
Special Services for Students with Disabilities
https://www.qc.cuny.edu/StudentLife/services/specialserv/Pages/default.aspx
Department of Computer Science
https://www.qc.cuny.edu/academics/degrees/dmns/computerscience/Pages/default.aspx
In general, attendance is not mandatory
Attendance of two exams on the scheduled dates is mandatory for those seeking an official grade. 1 Refer to the syllabus for more information regarding exam dates.
Due to the asynchronous nature of this course the university Verification of Attendance requirement can be fulfilled by taking the ungraded practice exam on Blackboard. This must be completed within the first two weeks.
Files with the extension
jscannot be sent via email, instead submit via Dropbox File Request
It's far easier to help students debug if I have executable code, but most email clients block files with the extension js (even if they are inside a compressed file). I've set up a directory specifically for code submissions. Students may upload any files that they want me to look at into this directory.
Please follow the recommended format to ensure your emails are correctly categorized on my end.
[CS355][{Student_ID}] – {Subject}
[CS355][{Student_ID}][A{Assignment_ID}][Q{Question#}] – {Subject}[CS355][{Student_ID}][A{Assignment_ID}][S{Step#}] – {Subject}
[CS355][11111111] – Having difficulties installing Node.js[CS355][22222222][A1][Q2] – Getting Error TypeError:Undefined is not a function[CS355][22222222][A3][S16] – Incorrect Value Printing on Step 16
Avoid combining topics into a single email, send multiple emails instead.
My workflow assigns a single task for each email received.
Sending a single email with multiple subjects, complicates this process, as I can only mark it completed when all questions have been responded to. If there's an external circumstances preventing me from responding to one subject, the other ones are delayed as well. This happens most often when multiple students are trying to schedule additional office hours. I also dislike the mental gymnastics required in keeping track of emails that have only been partially responded to.
Instead send one email for each topic, so I can distinguish completed from incomplete tasks.
Email is an asynchronous medium of communication, each additional round of emails incurs with it a significant delay. When composing emails try to anticipate my response, and use hypotheticals and conditionals to minimize the total number of emails being sent. Being overly verbose is preferred, as I can just disregard irrelevant information.
Student's requesting additional office hours should supply their schedule.
Student's who are having trouble with an assignment, should anticipate the types of questions that I would ask and preemptively answer them, most notably:
What did you try?
What error messages did you get?
Can I see your code? (Submit code via Dropbox File Request)
I will assume that any email that I send solves the given problem, unless I receive a reply. If my response solves the problem, there is no need to send thank you emails.
Students who manage to solve their own problem after initially emailing me, but before receiving a response, are encouraged to let me know, however. This saves me time from debugging something that has already been fixed.
This can be as simple as replying to the previous email with something like:
Nvm, fixed it!
Pursuant to the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act2 any questions pertaining to grades must be sent from the student's official university email address.
Grades will be posted to Blackboard as soon as they are available. Under normal conditions the first midterm should be graded before the withdrawal deadline. (If there is any exceptional circumstance that prevents this, I will make an announcement on the course webpage)
Avoid emailing me about checking your grades if they haven't been posted yet, I assure you I am grading the exams as fast as possible.
Don't skip steps!
Students who get stuck on a particular step in an assignment should not skip steps. Any code typed beyond the point where it initially stopped working is untestable and adds bloat which makes debugging difficult for me.
Go back to a state where the code works, try approaching the next step in various ways (taking screen shots of error messages along the way) and if nothing seems to work, then email me.
I scored X on the midterm, should I drop the class?
My grading policy is defined in the syllabus, and I do not deviate from it. Each student's numeric total is converted to a letter grade based on the university's guidelines3
If a student is trying to achieve or maintain a target GPA, but their exam performance makes that unlikely, withdrawing and trying again a different semester is a valid strategy. The difficulty of the midterm and final is designed to be roughly the same, and historically it's been uncommon to see significant positive performance improvements in a limited time frame.
Student's targeting a B- (2.7) GPA, who get a D (1.0) on the midterm, need an A (4.0) on the final to reach their target. It's very rare to see a student go from a D average to an A. Usually their fundamentals are shaky, and each subsequent lecture builds on top of those fundamentals.
I find that student's email me, because they are looking for some reassurance that they will reach their target grade. This is not something I can provide, as I cannot see the future.
Understand that each semester I have hundreds of students, and must treat all students equally with respect to grades.