First of all, this is very Scott Hanselman, so thank you for that Scott.

This post talks about questions that are about the module. Emails about housing, illness, a complaint about staff or another student, and similar questions are part of the job of ‘supporting learners’ and get thoughtful attention.

Now…

Students, whatever you might think, don’t like emailing you for information: they do so only when they can’t find the answer in a place they trust. Every email you get that asks a question that a student can find in the documentation tells you two things:

  • that the documentation is isn’t good enough
  • that this issue is important to the students.

However, it’s also annoying to give a serious, thorough answer to a question you have answered four times.

So I have an ‘Asked questions’ file.

The rule is this: for any question (that is not personal, private, or completely confused) that I received, I write one of two sentences in the answer:

  • “Your question will be useful to other students so I have put it into the ‘Asked Questions’ file (link)
  • This is a great question, it’s number X on the ‘Asked Questions’ file (link) and I’ve added to it in response to your question”

The ‘I’ve added to it’ is important. Each repeated question is a vote on the ‘how important is this issue to students’ scale and I should respond to that by making the answer more and more detailed and complete each time. It also avoids shaming the students for asking the question. If I answered “This is number 12 dumbass” then I’m unlikely to get much interaction out of the student in future.

After a few iterations you have a document that:

  • avoids multiple students sending the same question
  • means students with the same issue get an answer immediately

IY3501 has had an ‘Asked Questions’ document for two years. It’s nothing fancy - it’s literally a Word document on OneDrive. The first year it had 18 entires, the second year I added only four. I’m not expecting to add many next year. Obviously, you have to review the document at the start of each teaching term to check that things don’t need to be updated.