E-Mail Requirement "Shrinks" 200-Student Psychology Course

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Electronic mail isn't just for amusement or business interactions.

A University at Buffalo professor has found a way to use it as an educational tool to sustain discussion and reduce alienation in a 200-student lecture course.

John Meacham, Ph.D., UB professor of psychology, added an e-mail requirement to his developmental psychology course. He found that by exchanging e-mail messages, as well as attending class lectures, students received both the benefit of the lecture format and the opportunity for discussion of course material found in smaller classes.

The students in the Psychology 223 course Meacham taught last fall were required to send one e-mail message by the ninth week of class. At the end of the semester, they had transmitted a total of 1,781 messages, or an average eight messages each.

"The flow of communication is similar to what normally takes place in a classroom discussion," Meacham wrote in a recently published article in the Journal of General Education.

To establish the electronic interaction, Meacham created an e-mail discussion list (LISTSERV) for the course. It distributed all messages simultaneously to every subscriber. Any student could reply to the first message and replies were distributed to all subscribers.

As the list owner, Meacham decided not to control the public discussion list, hoping his limited presence would encourage students to respond more openly. The list helped meet the course's multicultural goals, such as understanding oneself and others beyond stereotypes and gaining familiarity with alternative viewpoints on issues raised in the course, including immigration policies, sex education, birth control, marriage, divorce, discrimination and television violence.

He found that the e-mail responses often were better in organization, logic and use of evidence than oral statements made during class time. In a few cases, students wrote thoughtful essays of 250-350 words after reading and reflecting on previous messages.

Students said they felt less self-conscious facing a computer screen than with scores of eyes staring at them. "I feel it has helped me a lot in voicing my viewpoints about issues in this class. It is very hard for me to talk in a big class, as well as read the minds of others who have the same problem. I always leave my classes wishing I had said something in class. This list not only allowed me to voice opinions, but to listen to others as well," wrote one student on a post-course evaluation.

Another reported: "It gave a personal aspect to a very large class. It helped me to understand concepts and theories."

Meacham plans to include the e-mail component when he teaches the same course again next fall.