Building a culture of e-mail communication among students: assessments and opinions of teachers
Authors:   Ryazan State University named after S.A. Yesenin, Eremenko Tatiana V. 
Published: November 2024

The culture of students’ electronic correspondence is considered in the article through the observance of the norms of academic etiquette. The university is interpreted as an environment in which individual self-determination of students takes place in the world of cultural values and a system of their personal value orientations is formed. The uniqueness of the university environment is due to the fact that it is in it that academic values are cultivated, which form the foundation of the university community. The research problem is determined by the level of comprehension of the existing practice of university electronic correspondence, which is not high enough to adequately assess it as a form of representation of cultural value regulators of the modern higher education system. The scientific task is to analyze the assessments and opinions of university teachers about the level of the culture of electronic correspondence of students and substantiate the relevance of purposeful work on its formation at the university. This is the first time such an empirical study has been conducted in Russian universities. The results obtained introduce new data into the scientific circulation, the use of which will contribute to an increase in the culture of electronic correspondence through the internalization of the value system of the academic ethos in the university at the level of regulation of student behavior with the help of etiquette norms. The main research method is an online survey, which was conducted in March – April 2021 using the Google Forms service. The questionnaire consisted of 19 main closed-type questions and 6 additional open-type questions. 197 teachers from Ryazan State University named after S.A Yesenin and Ryazan State Agrotechnological University named after P.A. Kostychev took part in the survey. In the article, on the basis of the analysis and generalization of the collected empirical data, the assumption about the insufficiently high level of formation of the norms of academic etiquette among students is confirmed. The degree of compliance with etiquette norms in students' emails is assessed by teachers at 3.3–3.5 points on a 5-point scale. The most common violations are the following: incorrect name of the attachment; the absence of an etiquette formula at the end of the letter; attachment without a cover letter; the absence of the words “Dear / Dear” in the address to the teacher; illiterate and careless design of the text of the letter; incomplete information about the student in the signature; not filling in the “Subject of the letter” field. The overwhelming majority of teachers note the high relevance of work on the formation of a culture of electronic correspondence among students during their studies at the university and indicate as the preferred means the course “Introduction to the specialty”, the curatorial hour on university etiquette, the corresponding section in the “Freshman's Memo”, the publication of a special booklet and a section in the Internal Regulations for Students. The ranking of etiquette norms according to the frequency of deviations from them carried out in the article is of practical importance for focusing efforts on the prevention of the most common violations. The results obtained make it possible to scientifically substantiate the directions of internalization in the university of the system of academic values at the level of regulation of students' behavior using etiquette norms.