Listserv

Features

• ISC provides a service that extracts e-mail addresses of students enrolled in courses from the Data Warehouse (which gets them from SRS) and builds mailing lists for faculty/student interaction
• List participation can be as restrictive or permissive as the faculty member wants; faculty can moderate lists to control all messages and responses, or can allow participation just by the course attendees, the whole campus, or the whole world.
• Unless lists are made public, participants must send messages and other commands from their "official" e-mail addresses.

Strengths

• Very easy to send messages.
• A passive means of communication: the information flows to students' e-mail accounts (in some cases whether they like it or not).
• Good archiving features that can be converted to Web access if appropriate.
• Communications can be restricted to just those students enrolled in a class and the faculty member's "guests."
• List can be maintained after the end of the semester if the faculty member chooses to continue interacting with students.
• Listservs tend to create a feeling of comfort and privacy among those participating in the discussion.

Weaknesses

• Replies to messages sometimes intended to the original sender alone may get sent to the entire list due to improper list settings or user error.
• Students may not respond to messages from the list due to "junk mail" overloading their mailboxes.
• Message size may be restriced by campus listserv or e-mail servers.
• Listserv can impose heavy load on e-mail servers, especially during peak periods, and cause delays in message delivery.
• The listserv server can have large disk space requirements due to lingering archives.
• Problems with individual recipient mailboxes may generate message failures that may need to be dealt with by the faculty list owner or his/her designee.
• Easy to forge "from" address on messages.
• Maintaining mailing lists can be time-consuming and difficult.

Strategies for Effective Use

• Use short messages for best performance.
• Point to more centralized publishing means (Web, NetNews, ftp) for distribution of files or longer material.
• Faculty should expect e-mail activity from students at all hours of the day (and especially) night, and may want to log in from home at night to facilitate this discussion.
• Users should not assume that just because a message is sent that it will be read promptly (or ever!).
• Users should be notified if archives will be kept of messages, and informed of the expected use of these archives.

Additional Information

• ISC's Listserv Management service (not all schools participate)
• Advice on using e-mail for courses
• Rules for Users of Penn's Electronic Resources
• Guidelines for Administrators of Penn E-mail Systems