Blurb:

This chapter encourages the reader to try to understand the student perspective by highlighting a number of specific e-mail messages and analyzing the student beliefs that might motivate them. This chapter reports in detail specific faculty complaints and concerns about student e-mail and considers the practice of teaching students how to use e-mail appropriately and effectively with faculty. The analysis confirms that though the form of students’ e-mails may reveal beliefs and practices different from those of faculty, many students do indeed understand and appreciate the existence of e-mail etiquette. Moreover, this chapter identifies several student conventions in e-mail. This section closes with an overall report on the functions for which students in this study chose to use e-mail including requests, excuses, expressions of gratitude and complaints, as well as other related topics such as the dropbox feature and their choice of e-mail language.