Guidelines & Procedures

The purpose of the Moraine Valley Community College student e-mail system, in partnership with Microsoft®, is to provide a means of communicating official college information to students and to encourage student engagement.

E-mail is a cost effective, convenient, rapid means of communicating between the college and students. The college has selected an e-mail system that is 100% accessible over the Internet through standard browsers in order to provide universal access to all students. Student e-mail is accessible from anywhere there is an available Internet connection, be that at home, at a local library, within the college in a computer lab, or at any of the open and available workstations distributed throughout the campus. This procedure ensures that all students have access to this important form of communication.

Students must use the e-mail account provided by Moraine Valley as their official means of communication.

Assignment of e-mail 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 e-mail 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.

E-mail Security
Students are responsible for the use and security of their e-mail 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.

E-mail account maintenance
Each student is issued a total of 5Gb (5,000,000,000 bytes) of storage for e-mail. 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 e-mail sent by the college. Not having storage available is not an acceptable excuse for not receiving communications from the college. A warning e-mail 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 e-mail is accessed is left to the student's discretion, it is recommended that students access the e-mail sent to their MVCC account directly from their @student.morainevalley.edu e-mail account and not forward/redirect their e-mail. There are considerable risks in forwarding/redirecting e-mail from the student's official college e-mail address to another e-mail 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 e-mails must be in good taste and appropriate to the culture and reputation of the college. See the college’s “Rules for Responsible Information Technology Usage”

All correspondence using e-mail 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 e-mails 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 simply 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., e-mail) 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 e-mail 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 e-mail for their classes accordingly.

• Adopting this practice will ensure that replies to e-mails in either direction will retain basic identification information in the subject line
  Example:
  Subject: COM101-001, Final Exam Date

Administrative Use of e-mail
This section of the document is intended to help guide the appropriate usage of student e-mail,
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 e-mail. It is more efficient to include the URL to the website within the body of the e-mail message

• Send e-mail 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 only public information is sent only to the student

• Caution should always be exercised in communicating sensitive matters by e-mail

• Privacy should not be assumed when employing this method of communication

• Ensure that the e-mail 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 e-mails sent by college administration should begin with one of the following:

  • MVCC Business

  • MVCC News

  • MVCC Events

  • MVCC Alert
     

• The subject line of e-mails sent between faculty and students should begin with the following:

  • Prefix Course - Section Number, Subject of e-mail
    Examples:
    COM101-001, Final Exam Date
    PHY101-003, When will my grade be posted?
    MIS111-001, Question on assignment 12