The first source, of course, should be the presentation of the lecture itself. A good set of lecture notes just provides an outline, which is verbally supplemented. Then, students add to those notes themselves based on the presentation. If nothing else, a crammed set of PowerPoint slides looks terrible.

Personally, I do understand that there are rare occasions when a student may need to miss a class, in which case I’m more than happy to answer questions about the notes when I recap at the start of the next session.

A default answer is definitely not a good idea – and there are many good strategies that both staff and students can use to ensure a response. That’s something that might well be worth me considering for a future blog post.

1. Is an email really necessary?

You may believe certain things are explained clearly, and they may well make perfect sense to you, but to assume you have given the perfect explanation for everything in your module notes is a very unrealistic thought. Even if you do have the perfect explanation to everything, not all students will understand all your perfect explanations, and many may need some explanation, because the supposed perfect explanation maybe difficult to understand due to any number of reasons.

8. Provide the information necessary to receive an answer

This should work both ways, if a student provides the necessary information, the member of staff responding should provide an answer if possible. I have found a minority of tutors who avoid answering students emails, and appear to paste a default response to all students. Some respond with a one or two word email, to which the meaning is open to interpretation.