Mailtool at BU School of Management

Faculty reaction

Our "other" system is Blackboard, so our users are coming from that set of expectations. I've been trying to get some mileage out of the argument that Blackboard's email form is in many ways inferior to using a full email client, and have had some modest success with this, but faculty are still pleased to have the option to send emails to select subsets of users without having to manage address lists in their email client.

This mailtool exposes another cognitive gap when it comes to its integration with the email archive, however. The way most of my faculty talk about it, they seem to want (or tacitly assume) that the email archive is for their personal use. They want it to track every email they've sent, even if they don't want students to read it. They haven't quite yet come to terms with the idea that the archive is also for the students' benefit.

Configurations

We've used it for student collaboration sites and course sites. I've found remarkably little agreement on which interface is best, and I've given each faculty member their choice during the pilot. Eventually we'll have to standardize on one choice or, more ideally, they will have that choice available to them as a drop-down list, much as the schedule tool does now. Instead of "Calendar by Week," etc. (see below), the mailtool might have something similar that said "Email by Role, Email by Tree," etc.:

Faculty generally prefer one of these three:

• tree
• side-by-side
• Foothill

In sites that we've created for student groups, we just implement the "user" configuration, and don't give them a choice.