Best Practices: Email Communications

The following article provides best practices to consider when composing your email communications to students, instructors, and administrators within your projects.

Student Emails

1. Assure students that course evaluations are completely anonymous.
2. Explain why surveys are important to the student and your institution.
3. Provide the timeline for the student to complete their course evaluation.

   1. Utilize Survey Start Date and Survey End Date or the Table of Surveys placeholders, which includes the start and end date of the survey for the course(s).

      

4. Mention all available access options in every communication, including student access to surveys via any LMS integration and the email link.

   1. Utilize Survey Start Date and Survey End Date or the Table of Surveys placeholders, which includes the start and end date of the survey for the course(s).

      

5. Utilize ALL email communication options available to communicate with students. The different email communications available to send to students are:
   1. Pre/Post-Survey Announcement Email
      1. A Pre-Survey Announcement Email is a great opportunity to advise the students of the upcoming survey and to explain what they should expect, including Survey Notifications in their LMS and the link provided in the Invitation Email.
      2. A Post-Survey Announcement Email can be used to announce to students when evaluation results are available externally, such as with the CES Student/Public Reporting module, if enabled for your institution.
   2. Survey Invitation and Announcement Email
      1. Announce the survey is now active, inviting participation and encourage feedback. As mentioned above, include the Passwordless Login URL placeholder so students can click the link to do directly to their surveys from the Invitation email.
   3. Non-Respondent Email
      1. Schedule multiple instances of this email throughout the project life-cycle. This can be a single, recurring email with the same message, or create multiple non-respondent emails to be sent at different intervals with different messaging in each.
      2. If students complete all of their course evaluations, they will no longer receive Non-Respondent Emails.
   4. Certificate of Completion
      1. Utilize this option if your students need to present documentation to their instructor to show completion of the course evaluation.

      2. Default setting is to use a Certificate of Completion Template that is populated with the following data:

         1. Institution name: Communication Type
         2. Project Name
         3. Course (Course code: Title)
         4. Instructor full name
         5. Survey submission date
         6. Student full name
         7. Message

         Example: Certificate of Completion Template with populated data

         

Instructor Emails

1. Include faculty in course evaluation communications so as to recruit them in further encouraging students to complete course evaluations within their classes.
   1. Create a Pre-Survey Announcement Email, a Survey Invitation and Announcement Email and Non-Respondent Emails for instructors so they are aware of the survey timeline and their response rates.

      1. Within Non-Respondent emails to faculty, include the Table of Courses placeholder, which will show the instructor important information, including their response rates for each course they are enrolled in.

         

         

   2. Include student access information in faculty emails, so instructors are informed on all the ways students can gain access to take their course evaluations.
   3. If Table of Courses is not included, be sure to included Survey Start and Survey End dates and times so instructors are aware of the survey period for their course(s).
   4. Explain why high student response rates are important to instructors and the institution.

Administrator Emails

1. Alert administrators to the start/end dates of the course evaluation period, as well as provide a Passwordless Login URL placeholder within your email communication to administrators so they can log in and access response rates for the areas they oversee during the course evaluation period.

Sample Emails

We have put together a collection of pre-written messaging templates. You can download this resource directly from the link at the bottom of this article.

The attached file contains ready-to-use templates for various scenarios, including survey announcements and non-respondent follow-up reminders.

Please note that these templates are entirely optional and are meant to serve as a helpful starting point or inspiration. We highly encourage you to customize them to better fit your institution's unique voice and style. You are completely free to edit, tweak, or rewrite any of the provided samples. Alternatively, you can choose to skip the templates entirely and write your own communications from scratch.

If you do decide to use our samples, please remember to review them carefully and fill in any placeholder text before hitting send.