How to Email Your Tutor or Lecturer (Part Two)

Hello! Welcome to the next segment of this multi-part series on emailing your Tutor or Lecturer. I really didn’t expect this to take up enough space to need multiple parts, but here we are. If you are finding this post first, you’ll want to backtrack a bit and find ‘How to Email Your Tutor or Lecturer (Part 1)’ to read about when and why you might need to do so.

In this post we will be looking at when to send an email, when to expect a reply, and what email account to use. Part three (and more, if needed) will cover crafting the email itself, including the subject, starting the email, the body of the email, and the signature. We will also cover a few quick tips on things to avoid when crafting your email.

When to send an email

You might wonder if there is a best day or time of day to send an email, and this is a great question. The short answer is that you can send an email at any time. This is email after all. It’s not a synchronous method of communication and you are unlikely to disturb anyone by sending an email at 2am. They will see it later when they look at their email.

The longer answer is that it’s important to send an email in good time. Sending an email in good time means it’s received in your Tutor or Lecturer’s email box before a pivotal moment passes. This is usually going to be the moment an essay is due or an exam starts, or perhaps before your tutorial or lecture begins. You always want to try to give your Tutor or Lecturer as much advance notice as possible. For example, if you know you have an upcoming GP appointment, send your email soon after you have it scheduled so they know not to expect you that day in class. If you’ve been dealing with a big issue that you know is going to affect you completing your essay on time, getting your email in early can save you a lot of anxiety. The most important part of this, however, is sending your email (or following whatever extension request procedure they have) before the deadline passes.  You’re much more likely to get a positive outcome, than if you send the email after the deadline.

Sometimes emergencies happen and you can’t notify anyone about it ahead of time. Perhaps there was a fire in your flat or a family member had an unexpected health emergency. These things happen. The best thing you can do is to send your email as soon as you are able to. Note: I said as soon as you are able to – not immediately. When emergency situations happen, emailing your Tutor or your Lecturer is not the most important thing. If your health or safety are in jeopardy, that is your priority.  The best advice, is that when you have a moment to breathe, to think about things outside of the current emergency, try to email your Tutor or Lecturer then.

When to expect a reply

Don’t expect an immediate response to your email unless you have previously been told explicitly that your Tutor or Lecturer will be on standby to do so. Tutors and Lecturers do a lot of work outside the classroom, and while they may sometimes do some of this work outside normal business hours, don’t expect to hear back from them at these times.

We can generally break response times down into three categories: normal, priority, and urgent. Note that your email will be treated as a normal email unless you clearly indicate it is important/priority or urgent. We’ll talk more about that in Part 3.

The normal category includes routine questions, requests for a meeting, and other similar things. For these kinds of questions, an expected timeframe for receiving a response can be up to a week. The priority category can include things like: not having access to the LMS, not knowing where to find your tutorial forum on the LMS, not being able to access required online reading, etc. An expected response time for emails clearly marked as priority is around 3 business days. Urgent emails must be marked as such in order to have any expectation of a quick response. An Urgent email appropriately marked might be responded to as quickly as 1-2 business days. As I’ve mentioned before, it is very rare that you’ll actually need an urgent response to an email. It is far more likely that you will need to send an email in good time and that it can be processed normally after receipt.

What email account to use

You’ll be best served by using your official university email account when emailing your Lecturer or Tutor. This is because they will be able to immediately identify it as a legitimate email sender and also know that its content will be relevant to their work at the university. If you send your email from a personal account (e.g. catgirl2002@hotmail.com) it might not be treated as immediately important or relevant. Having said that, if you aren’t able to access your university email account (perhaps this is part of the reason you need to email your Lecturer or Tutor), it is okay to use your personal email account. You’ll just want to be extra sure that the subject line of the email indicates that your email is legitimate and relevant.

Part 2 Wrap Up

I hope this second part of ‘How to Email Your Tutor or Lecturer’ has been helpful. If you have any questions that relate to this topic, feel free to ask them in the comments below and we’ll be sure to address them. Look out for Part 3 coming to a My Academic Family website near you!

Written by Carly McNamara