CTLTR

College Teaching Learning and Technology Roundtable

E-mail Usage for Students and Faculty

Introduction. In January 1998, various CTLTR task forces were created, each dealing with important issues related to educational technology. This section provided a report of the Email task force, which deals with the often energy provoking area of electronic mail (standards). The group was comprised of Norm Acunis (UTD, Chair), Frank Wolfs (Physics and Astronomy), Lori Havens (UCC), Mat Felthousen (CLARC).

Following is a locator list to navigate within this document:

• Charter
• Appropriate Use of Electronic Mail
• Basic E-mail Etiquette
• Acceptable Use Policies
  • Examples of Acceptable Use
  • Examples of Unacceptable Use
• Tools for E-mail
  • Tests Performed (tools and platforms)
• E-mail Package Selection Results
• Summary
• Back to CTLTR Main Page?

Charter:

Define appropriate uses, etiquette, integration within University mission for information access, and tools available for electronic mail. Provide a standard that will allow "seamless" electronic file exchange between students and faculty within a POP mail environment.

This charter is intentionally limited to the exchange of electronic documents between faculty and students. Our assumption is that these documents are created using software on PCs and MACs, and will be read using software running on PCs and MACs. We are therefore only considering the exchange of electronic documents between PC/MAC environments. Email clients running on other platforms (like UNIX and VAX) are not being considered.

All students already have free access to a POP server (running on UHURA). Faculty members, except those in Physics and Astronomy and in CAES, also have free access to a POP server. The cost of implementing this "seamless" electronic file exchange should be negligible to the College and should be invisible to the users of the service. We envision that the faculty use Eudora Light or Netscape Communicator to retrieve their email and the students use these to send their email. The packages are free and available for both PC and Mac platforms. However, in order for this approach to work, students need to be able to run these email packages from any of our public computers (which requires the installation of authentication software on all our public machines).

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Appropriate use of electronic mail:

Appropriate uses of electronic mail are any that are consistent with the mission of the University and which comply with any and all related Acceptable Use Policies. Included in those are statements with regard to violation of University guidelines, but also potential violations of State and Federal Law. Appropriate uses include any information gathering that is consistent with the missions of "two fundamental and interrelated components: The provision of the highest quality education and the creation and dissemination of new knowledge".

See web location "http://www.rochester.edu:80/pr/Renaissance/struc4.htm" for elaboration on this mission. In this regard, free speech principles are the "rules of thumb" such that it is not solely the content of what is being communicated with electronic mail. However, it is also a "rule of thumb" that in the communication and dissemination of such information, there should be no abuse of law or resources that prohibits the freedom of others to do the same.

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Basic E-mail Etiquette

Many electronic mail etiquette issues are common sense and consideration of others. Numerous institutions supporting electronic mail have issued their own standards of etiquette. Following are general considerations that are applicable to the University of Rochester's CTLTR group for consideration by other approval groups.

• Keep messages short and to the point.
• When quoting or forwarding information, send only the minimum necessary to provide background for your content.
• Email can be considered junk mail. Consider whether your audience would want to receive what you are sending.
• Focus on one topic in a single e-mail message and include a meaningful subject title for it.
• Capitalize words only to highlight an important point or to distinguish a title or heading. Capitalizing whole words that are not titles is generally termed as SHOUTING! *Asterisks* surrounding a word can be effectively used to make a stronger point.
• Cite sources and respect potential copyright of materials and/or seek permission to forward content when it seems to be "intellectual property".
• Be careful when using e-mail that does not benefit from the recipient's opportunity to observe your body language and expressions. If you feel that human interaction would be superior to e-mail, use the preferred means of communication.
• Minimize use of acronyms (e.g. IMHO is in my humble/honest opinion).
• When you compose an e-mail message, read it over before sending it and ask yourself what your reaction would be if you received it.

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Acceptable Use Policies:

See policies such as that for "Remote Network Access" at web location
"http://www.utd.rochester.edu/archive.oldhtml/remote/rnaaup.html" or the UCC Guide to Acceptable use at web location "http://www.rochester.edu/UCC/UNIX/sysinfo".

Examples of acceptable use include:

• Use for purposes of, and in support of the education, research, and health care mission of the University of Rochester community
• Use related to administrative and other support activities considered consistent with the mission of the University of Rochester community
• Use consistent with policies set forth by host systems managers (e.g. leaving logged in stations and sessions unattended)

Examples of unacceptable use include

• Violation of federal, state or local laws or statutes through the use of University of Rochester's computers or networks
• Providing, assisting in, or gaining unauthorized or inappropriate access to University of Rochester's computing resources
• Use of University of Rochester's remote network access facilities for unauthorized or inappropriate access to systems, software or data at other sites (e.g. downloading of copyright protected material including graphics, video, audio, literature, and any material which states, or even infers that permission to copy it is required from the owner or publisher
• Activities that interfere with the ability of others to use University of Rochester's remote network access resources, hosts, or other network-connected services effectively. You should exercise good citizenship with regard to realistic consumption of remote network access resources. There are both physical limits and work-related limits to the uses of the remote network access service. Uploading or downloading large files may not exemplify good citizenship if it impacts the ability of others to use remote network access resources (e.g. playing internet games which consume substantial bandwidth, running programs that consume inordinate network resources or run too long). If you have any question about whether you are using this resource appropriately, it is your obligation to seek approval from your Network Administrator who can also identify Internet Service Providers if you wish to consume substantial resources. Your Network Administrator can identify Internet service providers (ISPs) for you if you wish to consume this level of resource
• Activities that result in the loss of another person's work or unauthorized access to another person's work
• Distribution of chain letters or broadcasting to lists of individuals in such a manner that might cause congestion of the network and extend unduly, the time of usage of remote network access resources and University systems
• Use of University of Rochester's remote network access resources for commercial use or profit-making enterprise, except as specifically approved by the University. Use of these resources for commercial gain is inconsistent with, and may actually jeopardize the University's not-for-profit status. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) not connected to the University's network can provide you with inexpensive resources if you wish to conduct business on a network accessed via remote network access tools
• Sharing of your University system password(s), in violation of computer system policies
• Use of another person's account even if they permit you to do so. If you become aware of another person's password, you must advise that person to immediately change the password
• Attempting to circumvent protection schemes or exercise security loopholes relative to any remote network access hardware and firmware mechanisms
• Use of software at remote site not properly licensed. Each application has its own licensing requirements
• Protection of remote network access passwords protects University resources. Good citizenship includes observing the guidelines below as a mechanism to protect University property (remote access and connected systems):
  • passwords should be at least 6 characters long
  • passwords should not be based on a single word or name in any language
  • your password should never be the same as your account ID (UserID)
  • passwords should not be multiple words
  • passwords can be combinations of personal acronyms and words, numbers and letters randomly combined, or a number string and letter string in sequence, so long as the letter string is not a name or word as previously specified.

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Criteria of Tools Available for Electronic Mail

This section discusses the important characteristics of email tools that need to be satisfied in order to address the various needs of faculty and students. Independent of a formal interview process on the subject, it seems clear that there are some agreed to criteria for selection of these tools. These criteria include the following

1. should be free (no cost)
2. should have reasonable online documentation
3. should be stable and supported by a vendor as well as the University, preferably across multiple platforms
4. a reasonably small set of endorsed e-mail tools shall be available in public labs with front-end authentication to enable secured pop mail (e.g. a SecureID type of tool)
5. should meet the needs of either desktop or laptop portability and docking issues
6. should recognize standards for e-mail
7. should have a simple graphical interface where possible
8. should have common, non-proprietary encoding/decoding mechanisms
9. should be easy to use for day-to-day mail functions
10. should provide easy to use directory services
11. should not result in non-e-mail purchases such as memory upgrades
12. should be able to read content that has styles (e.g. bold, italic, and font size)

The options that satisfy most of these criteria are Netscape Communicator, Internet Explorer, and Eudora Light. They are all free and run on both the Macintosh and PC platform.

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Tests Performed Between Tools and Platforms

In order to evaluate the various email tools that are available, and satisfy most of the criteria outlined above, we have carried out a number of email tests between PC and MAC platforms. We installed Netscape Communicator, Internet Explorer, and Eudora Light on both platforms, and exchanged Microsoft Word and Excel files via a POP server running on a Macintosh. The following table summarizes the results of these tests.

		Email tools used by recipient
		Eudora / Mac	Eudora / PC	Netscape / Mac	Netscape / PC	Internet Explorer / Mac	Internet Explorer / PC
Email tools used by sender	Eudora / Mac	OK	OK	OK (name problem)	OK	Not recog- nized by IE on POP server	WORD OK EXCEL NOT
	Eudora / PC	OK	OK	OK	OK	OK	OK
	Netscape / Mac	OK	OK	OK	OK	OK	WORD OK EXCEL NOT
	Netscape / PC	OK	OK	OK	OK	Not recog- nized by IE on POP server	OK
	Internet Explorer / Mac	OK	OK	OK	OK	OK	OK
	Internet Explorer / PC	OK	OK	OK	OK	Not recog- nized by IE on POP server	OK

NOTE: The POP server used was running on a Macintosh (AIMS server). All PC applications ran on a Pentium running NT4. The MAC applications ran on a PowerPC running OS 7.5.5 and OS 8. Netscape Communicator 4 and Internet Explorer 4 were used as the browsers on both platforms. The latest version of Eudora Light (Eudora Light 3.05) was also used on both platforms.

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E-mail Package Selection Results

Clearly, no one package or host will meet all of the criteria outlined above. Also, note that security is not addressed since e-mail is recognized as inherently not secure. While this is a very controversial issue that is now receiving media attention, it is beyond the scope of our task to address. Based on the previously mentioned criteria and our test results we have concluded that the that the following two packages will satisfy our goals of "seamless" email between faclty and students.selections are;

Eudora Light {available at http://www.eudora.com/eudoralight/#download}

• stability could be questioned since it is free and is a competitor with QualComm's own Eudora Pro product. If cost is not an issue, you may wish to refer to retail locations via web location http://www.eudora.co= m/buying/us.html#retail or for estimated prices, web location http://www.eudora.com/b= uying/prices.html
• usage on a desktop presents usage considerations. If you have a portable laptop that you always use for e-mail both at work and at home, this is not an issue. However, if you are working on different client machines at home and at work, downloading mail from a server may result in having two In-Boxes and non-centralized e-mail filing systems if you like to file your messages.
• Eudora Light does not support all encoding/decoding mechanisms (e.g. UUencode). As a result, a native UNIX e-mail user may send attachments that you cannot read, and in fact, may scramble junk inline with the = e-mail message. While there are decoding tools, they present extra steps. Eudora Pro eliminates most, if not all of these concerns.
• quite weak in the area of directory services

Netscape Communicator {available at http://home.netscape.com/}

• similar to Eudora with regard to lack of portability for desktops
• stronger than Eudora Light in its support of (LDAP x.500) directory services which allow people to connect to Microsoft Exchange mail systems to inquire on addresses. it may be advantageous for you to be able to Search these mail systems' "Global Address Book" by name, get an e-mail address, and add it to your personal address book. Eudora Pro supports LDAP as well but does not allow the user to send mail without the html gunk.
• as with Eudora Pro, much stronger in terms of allowing a sender to select an encoding mechanism.
• may be an area of concern for PC users with only 16 Mb RAM. It does run okay, but does increase the amount of swapping that Windows 95 does (very perceptibly)
• enables the user to select html sensitivity at their address book level.

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Summary:    "Seamless" Electronic File Exchange Between Students and Faculty

There are at least two packages available for seamless exchange of Word and Excel documents in a mixed PC and Macintosh environment.  Eudora Light and Netscape Communicator were the two packages selected based on a balance of all the criteria.   In order to provide access to the above mentioned packages from our public machines, user authentication needs to be installed on these machines. Please note that the same user authentication tools are also required to implement the printing policy that is recommended by the CTLTR.

Of course, not all e-mail addresses will accept all encoding mechanisms.  It is the responsibility of the faculty to ensure that students have the correct e-mail address for proper communication.