The Issue
"There are too many emails!" "Did you really send it? Let me go back to check again." "I think your email is lost in my inbox." These comments are unfamiliar to many of us. In fact, it is increasingly a problem.
Emailing is an efficient communication channel. Information and documents are transported with just a click. Everyone in NUS is provided an NUS email account where they are connected with their lecturers, project group members, information from IVLE and CORS during module bidding period. However, these are not the only emails that find their way into our inbox. Every company, organization and student club wants to squeeze their advertisement into that cramped inbox and publicize their products and events. Without proper regulation, our inbox can be described by the commonly used term 'flooded'. Flooded inbox prevents important messages from being transmitted and hinders much required communication. Time is wasted daily to read and filter unwanted emails commonly known as 'junk mail'. This discourages students to even bother checking their emails subsequently.
General Research Question
How many unwanted* emails are students receiving each day?
*Unwanted would be defined as those emails that students would wish they did not receive.
Why an Attitudinal Survey is needed
As labeling certain emails and advertisements as junk mail is subjective, a survey is needed to see if the student body is comfortable in receiving these endless emails and advertisements. There is also a concern if there are frequent cases of broken communication and lost information due to the crowding of other unnecessary emails.
If this is indeed the situation, then there will be a need to notify the Office of Student Affairs to impose stricter regulations and limit the emails that can be sent to each student's account for the benefit and relief of the whole student body.
2 comments:
Hey Peng Siang, I agree that I spend most of my time deleting 'unwanted' mails whenever I log into my NUS email account. I also wish that only emails that interest me were sent to me as I methodically click 'delete'. However, I have not missed an important email thus far as I at least read the individual headings. The downside of that is that more time is spent looking through my mail.
Also, like you have mentioned, what is considered 'unwanted' is subjective as an advertisement that does not interest me may be a fortuitous opportunity for someone else. Hence, this makes studying this issue tricky. However, I still do believe that something can and should be done about the numerous spam email we receive. Maybe an effective solution to the problem would be to propose to OSA to let every student fill up a questionaire about his interests and what organisations or clubs would he/she like/dislike getting emails from before filtering out the truly unwanted ones.
The opinion of the students is crucial in deciding if the proposition to OSA is to be made, even though the opinions on the topic would be varied because of its subjective nature. However, we can still take the general conensus to conclude if we reject or accepth the hypothesis.
LAstly, I feel the general research question is a little too specific as it asks 'how many', which would be difficult to answer as it varies from day-to-day. Maybe a more general one could be 'Are NUS students reveiving too many unwanted emails?' Hope this helps.
Hey Peng Siang, I do agree that occasionally, I do receive certain mails in my NUS email that either does not concern me or I have no interest in. However, I guess those mails will still have to be forwarded to everyone in case there are students who are interested in a particular seminar or event. Also, there is already a spam filtering system embedded in our NUS mail to filter out unsolicited emails sent from outside school. This would therefore already reduce the amount of 'junk' emails by a significant amount.
I feel that the term 'unwanted' is very subjective and some emails may be very important to some or they may be considered 'junk' to others. I agree with what Matthew suggested about asking OSA to conduct a survey for every student to determine the kinds of emails that they would like to be forwarded. This would personalize the types of emails that each student will receive.
I feel that your general research question could be phrased in a manner that better expresses your objective which is to inform the OSA that NUS students are indeed receive too many 'unwanted' emails. Hence, 'Are NUS students receiving too many unwanted emails?' as suggested by Matthew is a good alternative. Hope it helps!
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