Hi Michael, Tom, et al. --
I'm not sure whether you'll see this as falling within the scope of the
user@berkeley.edu project you have proposed, but because you are proposing
that the service be closely integrated with CalNet it occurs to me that a
similar and very useful functionality might be built into the same
forwarding server:
Faculty (and other UCB course instructors) have access to student ID
numbers, but do not as part of the normal business of course registration
get a list of students' e-mail addresses. What if instructors were able to
use student IDs as e-mail addresses in order to send course-related
announcements to enrolled students? I can envision this in a couple of
different ways. Perhaps the instructors would simply send e-mail to a set
of student IDs (1234567@berkeley.edu, 2345678@berkeley.edu); or perhaps
some other application would automatically generate and maintain majordomo
lists from extant course-enrollment databases (about which I know
absolutely nothing, so I really have no idea how hard or easy this would
be) -- so the instructor would mail to something like
Sociology107_Fall2002@berkeley.edu.
Unless I was dreaming it, I believe I saw something in the past week that
announced a UCB requirement that students provide an e-mail address that
they will check at least once a week, which will become the "official"
means of communication from the university to students, I believe beginning
this coming Fall semester. My suggestion seems to fit this trend of
allowing (and facilitating) communication from the unversity to enrolled
students, expanding the utility of these soon-to-be-required e-mail
channels by making them available not only to the campus administration but
to the instructors who have the greatest and most regular need to
communicate with students.
I'll take this opportunity to thank you for putting your proposal forward,
whether my suggestion fits it or not. For years now I've been hearing from
colleagues and friends at other universities how ridiculous it is that
UCB's addresses have to be so cumbersome.
Thanks,
Steve Masover
Steve Masover
Programmer/Analyst
Staff Affirmative Action Office
(510) 643-5631 (voice)
(510) 642-0523 (fax)
masover@uclink.berkeley.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 21 2002 - 08:48:00 PST