Why I need everything in an email.

Something happened this week in one of my classes that I wanted to share and get your feedback on. Last week a student asked if I could bring a cord so they could connect their calculator to a computer and update their OS. 

Student: Did you bring the cord you talked about last week?
Me: No. Did you email me about it like I asked you to?
Student: No.... But I asked you last week.
Me: If it wasn't in an email, I didn't remember.
Student: [Blank stare.]

In general, whenever I talk to a student verbally and they are asking for something, or I need to follow up on something, I ask them to send me an email reminder. With 1-3 such requests each class, for my four college-level classes that adds up to about 4-12 tasks I need to accomplish. To make sure these things are accomplished I use my email as a to-do list, with student emails as the 'things' on my list.

What about you? How do you make sure all the small requests and follow-ups are completed in each of your classes?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art" by Ted Chiang

With Fall term drawing near, and the impending students questions of "Why do I have to learn this if A.I. can do it for me?" and similar questions has me preparing my quiver of responses.  In The New Yorker, Ted Chiang's August 31st article "Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art" has some good criticism of A.I. Here are a few quotes and frames from the article I am drawn to.  "Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium. But the creators of traditional novels, paintings, and films are drawn to those art forms because they see the unique expressive potential that each medium affords. It is their eagerness to take full advantage of those potentialities that makes their work satisfying, whether as entertainment or as art." In short, are you really creating something of worth or value with A.I.? "Effort during the writing process doesn’t guarantee the end product is worth readi...
Read more

Culinary Math and Visual Mnemonics

Image
For the upcoming fall term I've been contracted to teach a culinary math class at a local culinary school. The course deals primarily with units of measure, yields, and recipe costing. Doing my own research into the course content I found an excellent resource in Culinary Math , by Linda Blocker and Julia Hill. Overall it is an excellent introduction into the mathematical topics that are important to cooks and chefs, and the terminology they've developed around them. One aspect of the book that I really enjoyed is its use of visual mnemonics . The first one they use is this one to show the relationship between cups, pints, quarts, and gallons: Within each 'P' there are two 'C's, indicating that there are two cups in every pint, and so on; two pints to a quart, four quarts to a gallon, etc. This has a really nice recursive relationship as well, within each 'Q' there are four 'C's, meaning there are four cups in a quart. The design of it is ...
Read more

Planning for the Fall: Flipping my class and shadow grading

Image
 In a previous post ( Pre-Pre-(Pre?)-Planning: Fall 2021 - Standards based grading, flipped classroom, corequisite support, and maybe group work? ) I discussed my plans for the summer. I just completed the course Flipped Plus Model  taught by Jessica Bernards and Wendy Fresh , and my plans for my fall course have changed slightly. This course I am teaching is a corequisite support version of our 100-level business math class, and contains both prerequisite math topics, and success skill assignments. This will be the first time I have taught a face-to-face course since March of last year, and for various reasons 5/8 of the course (100-level math content) will be face-to-face, with the remaining 3/8 (prereq math topics and success skill assignments) online. In that previous post I discussed standards based grading, and while it is something I'm still interested in I think I am going to focus for the month of August on 'flipping' my course. This is half inspired by  Flipped...
Read more