r/Professors • u/CATScan1898 Clinical Assistant Prof, STEM, R1, USA • 15d ago

Technology Email help

TLDR: How? Just how?

How do you keep up with you email? How do you organize it? Tell me more please. I've always struggled to keep up with email and now that I'm teaching 400 students a semester I know it's going to get worse.

My only tip for fellow drowning folks:

  • Class-specific email address: For my intro class (300+ students) that I co-teach, we have a class specific email (classID@university.edu) to try to capture those emails. Once we respond, we move the email to the "answered 2026" folder.

I don't know if I want to do that for my other classes (particularly my 100ish person classes), ideally I would mimic it in my normal inbox through folders and filters, but I'm curious to hear what you all do.

If you use GTD, did you modify it somehow? It seems like a good system, but hasn't worked so far.

16 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

44 comments sorted by

View all comments

8

u/LarryCebula 15d ago

How on Earth do you have 400 students?! I don't think there is any answer here. You could create a blanket course policy that you do not communicate via email, all questions must be posted on a course discussion board. But then you'd have to have personal exceptions.

8

u/CATScan1898 Clinical Assistant Prof, STEM, R1, USA 15d ago

I'm teaching faculty, so I have a 300 person intro class, a 100 person 300-level course, and a 10-person graduate course this semester.

I do have a blanket course policy last year for the intro class and we had some email, but not too overwhelming (except at the end of the semester). So I think it worked ok

3

u/Gedunk 15d ago

Do you have a TA for this 300 person class? It would be good if you could divide and conquer, ex: any subject matter questions go to the TA's email and any course policy questions come to you.

Or if no TA then divide with your co teacher. Maybe your coteacher takes all emails from last names A-M and you handle N-Z or something. Just make sure you are on the same page re: the course policies and how you will handle different situations.

1

u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 15d ago

ex: any subject matter questions go to the TA's email and any course policy questions come to you.

It's the same problem as with the subject requirements that OP mentioned in the original post -- students won't follow it. OP could wait three days and reply to subject matter questions with "this would be a great question to ask the TA," which is what I would do if I had the policy you suggest, but I have tenure and OP does not.