emailed excuse

I’ve begun a new teaching technique this semester to put online platforms in practice for my FYC classrooms. I’m beginning simply with the email and by sending MS Word files through email. I send an email note (with or without a connected file)- the contents of which are intended to be my student’s reminder system (and my documentation of my teaching process). I write them all but if someone sends me a question asking for clarification on an assignment or an exercise I’ve asked them to do, I send the answer to all members of all 3 of my classes – in the form of the summary of what I actually said in explaining it initially in class. If there is a question about anything I’ve covered in the previous meeting, I send my lecture notes simplified for their perusal. I’m writing and keeping these things in conjunction with my research into my classroom activity in order to track with the subsequent results. I hope they don’t figure it out that a question produces a classroom session summary and begin to skip class. Note: A glitch showed up this morning in my email sending and receiving process. Apparently, something happens out there in the ether, in which the information about an assignment that I send comes back in the form of an assignment that is different than the one I requested. Either that or perhaps they believe if one changes the name of the assignment to match what one actually did, then that is close enough to doing the actual assignment without doing the actual assignment. So many give the same answer when I ask about it, “at least I turned something in.” I am interested in continual access to their process. I bang out a quick return email with the appropriate explanation. It’s like a class information search machine. Pose a question, a deficit = get an answer. Maybe why so many say they can’t properly access their email. Just a thought.