Most communications that you send to, or receive from, your tutees will be electronic, and email is likely to be the primary format for such communications. You should be aware that although all students have a University email address, not all students regularly read messages sent to this address, if at all. Due to the volume of messages from the University and elsewhere which the students consider to be spam, many students choose not to access their University email account at all, so you cannot rely on this solely as your means of communicating with your tutees.
Regardless of the precise communication channel used, there are some general principles that should guide your electronic communication with tutees. Academic Tuition aims to provide a supportive student-tutor relationship and your communications should reflect this. You should begin and end messages with a cheery greeting. Formal academic titles such as Doctor or Professor can be intimidating to students and make communications appear more impersonal, so it can often be useful to sign your email with a relatively informal automatic email signature and omit any formal titles and qualifications. The language you use in your communications is important. An informal approach combined with the use of emoticons to convey feelings can ‘soften’ communications making you seem more human and approachable.
It is good practice to keep a copy of all electronic communications sent to students and, if your chosen communication medium supports it, you may wish to consider using read and delivery receipts. If you are using email, read and delivery receipts allow you to determine whether the intended recipient received or opened your message. These tracking mechanisms are particularly useful if you are trying to contact students in difficulty or who may be showing signs of disengaging with their studies. They also provide an audit trail to show that you have attempted to contact the student, which can be important in certain rare cases to safeguard your actions and those of the University.