If a student sends you an angry email, keep your cool and consider the following guidelines by Victoria S. Brown, assistant professor of educational technology at Florida Atlantic University, in handling the situation:
- Do not respond immediately. Wait two or three days and carefully consider your response.
- Use a professional tone.
- Address the student by name.
- Deal with only the issue brought up in the email.
- Do not address personal matters via email. (If you need to address such issues, use the telephone.)
- Limit your response to two or three lines. (“The more you write, the more ammunition you’re giving them to get angry all over again,” Brown said.)
- Close “Respectfully, [your name].”
Reference
“Effective Communication in Online Learning Environments,” 2010 FIU Online Conference (archived workshop, accessed December 15, 2010, at http://online.fiu.edu/faculty/professionaldevelopment/conference/2010).
Reprinted from Online Classroom (Jan. 2011): 1.
This Post Has 2 Comments
Great advice here. Another tip that might help: I not only try to read every e-mail as if it was spoken in a whisper (which takes some "sting" out of the overall tone) but I also try to teach my students to read all e-mail as if it was spoken to them in a whisper. Defusing bombs is easier before they've gone off!
Hello Rob:
Thank you for a thoughtful post. There are several good tips presented here.
I'm also an online instructor and would like to add a couple of thoughts:
1. Many online schools have a required response time, which means I may have to respond quickly to the email. If the student's message has an angry tone I may write my message in a Word document first, save it, and come back to it a little later.
2. I use a professional tone and a warm tone. I want to convey a sense of caring to help ease the tension.
3. I have also found that it is important to get to the heart of the issue and not address the behavioral aspects.
4. While use of a phone call can be helpful, many online students work varying shifts and it is not easy to locate them. Plus, many online schools require email responses to document the conversations.
5. When I close the response, I indicate my willingness to help. That's a great way to conclude my reply.
Dr. J