The brave new (e-mail) world

A s residential debate came to a head last spring, an undergraduate's chances of speaking to Bill Burig dwindled. The line of students emanating from the assistant dean of student development's door stretched down the staircase. If a student called Burig, he or she was told that the dean's voice mail box was too full to take messages. Perhaps these students using these traditional modes of communication were misguided--those who sent him questions via e-mail received long detailed responses almost immediately.

"I was working all hours of the night, and I didn't have to worry about calling students that were asleep. I could just sit down and type away," Burig says of those stressful days. Several students sent him notes telling him to "hang in there," while many others weren't as appreciative, he says.

With the alcohol policy debate hanging over her head, the vice president for student affairs, a woman who receives up to 50 messages each day, has perhaps an even tighter schedule. What's Janet Dickerson's solution? She carries her powerbook, lap-top computer everywhere she goes, spending vital hours of the day responding to the concerns of the University community electronically .

Everyday over 60,000 messages are transmitted on the University's e-mail system which is comprised of the approximately 20,000 faculty, student and staff accounts. Just five years ago, one-quarter of the current number of accounts existed.

"It's more a matter of access than anything else," Burig says. "People are able to have direct access to folks that they have had to stand in line for hours, days, weeks, etcetera, to see in the past."

All University administrators currently are available by e-mail, having gone online when President Nan Keohane came into office two years ago.

"Most [administrators] had never used it before; some of us had not, until then, ever typed anything ourselves," says Dickerson. "It made us more connected."

Paper Clutter has been reduced in the Bryan Center, class lectures are being forwarded via the Internet, and students now are sending electronic letters directly to administrators instead of written ones to "the editor." They discuss University issues without having to wait for tomorrow's paper.

"E-mail helps clear the air before things build up, because it's convenient," says Trinity senior Darren Perkins. "People are communicating more. But because it's too easy, people aren't thinking about it enough. It's so easy for people to run off huge, bitchy letters to faculty and administrators. I wonder how much people are thinking about what they're saying anymore."

It's something that certainly has been noticed by Keohane, who says people often "fire off messages that they wish they hadn't sent."

Indeed, typing into a blank computer screen sometimes gives people the courage to say things they couldn't muster if they had to look that person in the eye. "If somebody writes a letter to the editor, they might go over it three or four times to make sure it's accurate," Burness says. "But when it's anonymous on the screen, the crassness of the language is overwhelming. The gender references to the president, the anatomical references, were astounding. It's the anonymity, I'm convinced, which makes that possible."

Which isn't to say the entire community logs on and types scathing, vulgar, stream-of-consciousness commentaries on university life. Many people, in fact, are more guarded with their e-mail than with the spoken word.

"The benefit of being able to edit your comments before sending them allows you to be careful about what you say, how you say it, and to whom you say it," says Jim Frisbie, a programmer for the University's administrative computing department.

Time to consider the response is the aspect that Keohane likes the most about e-mail. In fact, e-mail is the best way to contact her: Someone else opens her mail, and she rarely takes phone messages because she simply doesn't have the time. She does, however, receive almost 50 e-mail messages each day, the vast majority of which get quick responses.

"I like to have that little bit of distance that the phone doesn't allow," Keohane says. "It's important to recognize that you can pause and think about what you're saying on e-mail. It's a wonderful combination of directness and distance."

Keohane relates one of her more memorable e-mail interactions. "I remember one message, for example, that I got last spring, where someone wrote a very excoriating analysis of all the problems that he saw in residential life--it was quite direct," she says. "I wrote a response, which I thought was direct, but tactful, about how I thought he'd misconstrued some of the issues; but I appreciated hearing from him, and he wrote back literally `Gee, I didn't know you were a real person.' As if I was sort of an e-mail address in the sky," she laughs.

But our so-called obsession with e-mail is not as pervasive as some would think. Many students insist that personal interaction makes a difference, and don't like administrators to be just a few curt sentences on the screen; rather, they prefer to wait for an appointment where they can talk face to face.

Others say that e-mail hasn't eliminated personal contact, just aided it and changed its nature.

"It's facilitated a lot of discussions," says engineering senior Rob Haley. A message of his was forwarded from Dickerson to Burig, and as a result, the two were able to communicate faster. In that vein, says Burig, e-mail has become a supplement for interaction. "I've found students are now e-mailing me to remind me of conversations or to clarify opinions," he says.

The net result has been a change in the administrative decision-making process: The individual opinion, as stated by electronic transmission, is playing a larger role than ever before. Administrators now learn faster about problems, but they must be careful about the rash reply.

"We may respond more quickly to some issues, which can be good and bad," Dickerson says. "We have to be careful not to weigh individual opinions too heavily."

Of course, issues related to student affairs are not the only area in which the University has seen changes resulting from the advance of information technology; e-mail's brought the community closer to that Holy Grail of the ivory tower experience: faculty-student interaction.

"I find it a very convenient way to communicate with my students, especially when I have a large class," says Patrick Wolf, a biomedical engineering professor. "Students are more likely to ask questions through e-mail than face to face--there's something less intimidating. Students seem to use it more than they use my office hours."

E-mail has invaded an array of disciplines: biology classes use a Virtual Frog Dissection kit on the World Wide Web saving tons of frogs; instructors are e-mailing students lecture notes making it so students arguably need not attend class; and when Trinity junior Mirah Horowitz was at the U.N. International Conference on Women in Beijing, China, she was able to send Katherine Fulton, her public policy professor, daily insights and reactions.

"E-mail's particularly useful for me to communicate with a whole class. If I go home in the evening and I find an error in the assignment then it's very easy for me to send a message and they'll have it immediately," adds engineering professor Eric Pas.

Professors transmit assignments, grades, changes in office hours and notices of class cancellations. The nature of the impersonal lecture class has seemingly been altered by this phenomenon, as students now get to know their professors through class discussions on the Internet.

"I had one class where there was a lot of communication in response to discussion in class or a guest speaker, or just conveying information," says Trinity senior Stacey Marcus. "We set up a news group. It was a place where students could ask questions of other students, or the teacher responded. It was kinda helpful."

But, are students making queries about necessary information or are they laboring to come up with questions to ask because participation is part of their grade?

"I'm in a class right now, Drama 51, that requires that we post once a week on the news group--it's a discussion section. We have to post, and talk, and respond to people's comments on something that we've discussed in class, or a play we've seen or a movie that we've watched," says Trinity senior Andrew Grosso. "I think right now it's a little forced. But I think once I do it more, it'll become a little more natural. It seems that we're making comments because we have to and not just because it's an easy way of making comments."

Not only is it much easier for students to track down that busy professor, but receiving help in a written form is also a plus. Furthermore, e-mail provides a forum for the easy question that might otherwise be something of a waste of time.

"E-mail cuts down on a lot of unnecessary interaction. A lot of times you don't have a substantive question for them, and usually it's just a procedural question, or to clarify an assignment," Perkins says.

With teachers and students talking so much over e-mail, sometimes they don't see one another. Taken to the extreme, Perkins fears the result will be an over-reliance on e-mail, eliminating personal interaction completely.

"A professor might be more inclined to rely on e-mail and to skimp on their office hours," he says. "I've had TAs say that first you had to go through e-mail to make an appointment with them, which was sort of disappointing because you couldn't walk in whenever you wanted to."

Harold Erickson, a professor of cell biology, doesn't foresee such a problem.

"I've never had many students coming in [to my office hours], but I do handle a lot of student interactions now by e-mail. Maybe half never have to come by," Erickson says.

Most observers maintain that if students have the desire to meet face to face, instructors certainly are willing to do so.

"I haven't heard of any professor who ruled that out and said that all interaction henceforth will be electronic. It just gives students and professors a lot more options to communicate," says Haley, the senior engineer. "It's a lot more flexible. It's 24 hours a day, any time. Office hours are whenever a professor wants to have them and sometimes students have class."

But when a professor and student create a tacit understanding about the convenience of e-mail, the result can, in fact, be no interaction. "I have one independent study that I'm taking where basically my professor is pretty busy so it's often easiest talking to him on e-mail. That's how we communicate," says engineering senior Pascal Phares. "I tell him what I'm doing on e-mail, or I slide something under his door, and if he has suggestions, he sends them to me on e-mail."

This may be the wave of the future, according to Burness, the vice president for public affairs. One university has courses in which students grade their peers papers anonymously on the screen. Burness says that results have been very positive. Students are much less inhibited in their comments to one another and can thus learn more.

"You're reluctant to say it to the person's face; you watch how critical you are," he observes. "But the student's own attention to the papers, editing and commentaries, is apparently a wonderful, wonderful working tool."

The Internet's function as a conduit for helpful information seems to be one of its biggest attractions. And administrators are very well-aware of the role the technology can play. The Pre-Major Advising Center, for example, encourages advisors to keep in touch with their students via e-mail. "But we still maintain our traditional expectation that substantial conversations about course selection and the major and various other kinds of business be conducted at the pre-major center," says Norman Keul, director of the center, "because of the availability of the student's files and academic records."

Nevertheless, he adds, "We maintain quality control by expecting advisors to send small written reports of what business they did conduct with the student [via e-mail] to the pre-major center so that we can include it in the advising file."

The Career Development Center constructed a web-site last fall that includes all of their print material, the career guide, brochures and announcements. Making this information available 24 hours a day was a big improvement since they had been debating whether or not to extend their office hours beyond 5 p.m., says John Noble, director of the CDC.

"We're able to provide most of the information students need online so that we can continue spending our time on one-on-one sessions with students going over specific career plans, which really is our forte," Noble says. It's too early for him to determine if there's a great deal less traffic in the office because of students accessing the CDC on the Web.

The CDC online has set up 20 different mailing lists in various fields. New this year, juniors and seniors participating in on-campus recruiting programs can get most of the information about companies that are coming to campus online as well as sign up for interviews. This way, they don't have to keep coming by the CDC to check lists. Soon, students will be able to directly upload their resumes to companies as well.

Also on the Web is Duke Student Government's home page, another major information source, listing clubs and a calender, offering free legal advice from DSG's lawyer, a book exchange, a ride-rider board and academic help. The web-site has been accessed more than 2,000 times, and while many have called it irrelevant, the page is in its early stages and has much to offer.

More and more, University business is conducted electronically. The registrar informs students via e-mail when they get accepted off the wait list into a class; professors can now get their class rosters sent by e-mail; students can find out about registration options on the Internet. There's even an e-mail suggestion box for the registrars' office. In addition, the bursar and the library send students notes notifying them of bills and fines, to which students say they reply much quicker.

"E-mail allows people to communicate fairly quickly and without all the inefficiencies of playing phone tag," says Marion Shepard, associate dean of the School of Engineering. "It's sometime difficult for three people who have something important to discuss to be at the telephone at the same time, but you send e-mail and generally people read e-mail in a working day and bypass that inefficiency and get a dialogue going."

We're a long way away from a life completely "e-mailified." The technology has not annexed the entire campus--at least not yet. People still put up flyers, and for now, The Chronicle, though adjusting, is still in business. And while e-mail may be the more efficient way of contacting President Keohane, some traditionalists still live among us--just check out her office hours.