Do Students Read Instructor Emails? A Case Study of Intervention Email Open Rates

Email is an important mode of communication because it scales to the largest computing courses and is institutionally supported. Furthermore, regular email communication from instructors has been shown to help set student expectations and encourage participation. As a result, effective email can contribute to emotional engagement, which has been linked to improvements in performance and retention, the latter being a persistent problem in computer science. However, we lack a clear picture of how computing students interact with emails and whether their use aligns with instructors’ expectations. This paper addresses this gap by presenting data on how often CS1 students open instructor emails. We present email engagement data throughout the term for a particular type of email that prompts students to plan to start their homework. Contrary to instructors’ expectations, the rate at which students open emails of this kind does not change significantly over the term. Many students who engage with the emails do so consistently, even after repeated emails throughout the term. The patterns we found illustrate the value of collecting this type of data and informing instructors and researchers about who reads these messages and how often they actually reach students.