Creating individualized e-mail to students

Abstract

PARTICULARLY IN HIGHER EDUCATION, instructors often use e-mail to communication course-related information to students. This use of e-mail is increasing substantially because of instructors’ and students’ greater access to and familiarity with the medium, and also because of the greater involvement of post-secondary institutions in distance learning. Creating e-mail messages to large numbers of students, however, is time consuming when separate messages are written to each student. Sending a common message to all students in a class, for example, using a ListServ, saves time but is inadequate when different information must be conveyed to each student. The present paper describes how to create individualized e-mail messages to students in a way that is both efficient and personalized. These procedures have been used successfully by the author in two courses—a large-enrollment statistics course taught by lecture and a graduate-level course in educational measurement taught through distance learning. The technique combines the mail merge capability of a Windows-based word-processing program with that of an MAPI-compliant e-mail client. Step-by-step directions are provided.