Guidelines & Procedures
The purpose of the Moraine Valley Community College student email system, in partnership with Microsoft®, is to provide a means of communicating official college information to students and to encourage student engagement.
Assignment of email addresses and accounts
Each student that enrolls at Moraine Valley Community College,
with exception to students under the age of 13 enrolling in a young
adult program, are automatically issued an email account. This account
will be created electronically upon registration to any class and
requires no action on the student’s part.
The account will be unique to each student and cannot be changed unless the student's legal name changes.
Email Security
Students are responsible for the use and security of their
email accounts. Your account password is private and confidential
information. You will never be asked for your password by an employee of
the college. Do not share your password with anyone.
Email account maintenance
Each student is issued a total of 5Gb (5,000,000,000 bytes) of storage
for email. It is the student’s responsibility to manage this storage on
a consistent basis to ensure that there is ample storage available to
continue to receive email sent by the college. Not having storage
available is not an acceptable excuse for not receiving communications
from the college. A warning email will be sent if a student approaches
the 5Gb limit.
If the account owner does not log in at least once every 180 days, the contents of their inbox will be deleted. However, the account itself will remain, and the inbox will generate anew on the user’s next authentication.
While the manner in which email is accessed is left to the student's discretion, it is recommended that students access the email sent to their MVCC account directly from their @student.morainevalley.edu email account and not forward/redirect their email. There are considerable risks in forwarding/redirecting email from the student's official college email address to another email address. Forwarded/redirected messages may be delayed, lost in transit at various points along the Internet, or rejected by the targeted mailbox.
Guidelines for communication
Messages intended to promote student engagement may be sent
only when directly related to the college and of significant importance
to students. All emails must be in good taste and appropriate to the
culture and reputation of the college. See the college’s “Policy for Responsible Use of
Information Technology (Policy No. 6710)”
All correspondence using email should have an appropriate identifier as the first information on the subject line followed by a specific tag line. This will greatly enhance the ability to recognize the purpose behind emails originating from different offices of the college and from students to the college. Subject heading for messages from the college to students will follow these categories:
MVCC Business
- Information regarding students’ academic record, payments, last day to drop, financial aid, etc.
- Information requiring an action on the student’s part, i.e. make
payment, attend orientation, the college needs to gather additional
information, etc.
Example:
Subject: MVCC Business – Last day for Open Registration
MVCC News
- A periodic newsletter containing brief descriptions of events
taking place on campus
Example:
Subject: MVCC News – October 15, 2008
MVCC Events
- College sanctioned events and activities
- General interest information appropriate for all students
- Student organization information of broad interest
Example:
Subject: MVCC Events – College Spirit Day
MVCC Alert
- Notification of building or college closings
- Notification of class cancellations or relocations
- Security alerts
- Other time sensitive, critical information
Example:
Subject: MVCC Alert – Class relocation, COM101-001
For communications between faculty and students, it is recommended all faculty and students follow the following guidelines as it will greatly the communication process.
Prefix Course - Section Number
- For course communications (communications from faculty to student)
- Faculty will determine how electronic forms of communication (i.e. email) will be used in their classes, and will communicate their requirements in the course syllabus or other means.
- This will ensure that all students will be able to comply with the email based course requirements specified by faculty.
- Faculty can therefore make the assumption that students’ official @student.morainevalley.edu accounts are being accessed and faculty can use email for their classes accordingly.
- Adopting this practice will ensure that replies to emails in
either direction will retain basic identification information in the
subject line
Example:
Subject: COM101-001, Final Exam Date
Administrative Use of email
This section of the document is intended to help guide the
appropriate usage of student email,
in particular those messages sent from college administrators, faculty
and staff to students and between students and faculty.
General guidelines
- Keep messages simple and direct. Messages should be short, as long messages are less likely to be fully read by the students
- Avoid cutting/pasting content from a web site into an email. It is more efficient to include the URL to the website within the body of the email message
- Send email messages only to the specific group of students for whom the message is pertinent
- Encourage students to check their @student.morainevalley.edu accounts regularly
- Ensure that any public information is sent only to the student
- Caution should always be exercised in communicating sensitive matters by email
- Privacy should not be assumed when employing this method of communication
- Ensure that the email is addressed only to the intended recipient(s)
- All official electronic communications are subject to the college archives/records management policies. Offices creating official communications are responsible for coordinating retention of these communications.
- The subject line of emails sent by college administration should
begin with one of the following:
- MVCC Business
- MVCC News
- MVCC Events
- MVCC Alert - The subject line of emails sent between faculty and students
should begin with the following:
Prefix Course - Section Number, Subject of email
Examples:
COM101-001, Final Exam Date
PHY101-003, When will my grade be posted?
MIS111-001, Question on assignment 12
