How much time is reasonable to respond to an email if you are an instructor?

[soliloquy]

I am in the final stretch of my Capstone. I will be finished in 7 days. :hurray: I submitted draft 3 of my capstone on July 1. I asked for her to review it and send me changes before the long weekend so I could work on the last draft over this weekend. My instructor has praised the fact that I turn my assignments in on time (frequently ahead of time).

I have not heard from the instructor since July 1. I know it is a holiday week but there was still July 2 and July 3 before the holiday came. I forwarded it to her again on July 1 just in case she didn't get it. I really wanted to be finished with the last draft this weekend but because she won't respond, I am forced to wait until whenever she decides to get back to me.

I think if you are going to be an adjunct professor you should either respond promptly or let your students know if you will be out of town. I understand that there may be computer problems (although generally they don't tolerate these excuses for students) or health issues but if I'm paying over $1,000+ for one class, I expect some sort of feedback.

[Westerner]

Yeah, I had a professor who went out of town sometimes and was thus late answering my emails, yet didn't let us know ahead of time he'd be unavailable :willynilly: With TESC, I learned not to expect much in the way of professor communication over the weekend or holidays. When I occasionally got a reply on like a Sunday, I'd be thrilled

Has your prof okayed your previous drafts? If she has and you haven't changed much since then, you could probably call it done. I got to know my Capstone prof and what he liked/expected. By the end of the course I thought of and added a point in my final draft that I hadn't included in previous drafts, and he was totally ok with it. But from his grading and comments in previous weeks, I pretty much figured he'd be fine with that addition.

That's my input, though I'm not sure how your school's Capstone goes, so...

[soliloquy]

We have to turn in four drafts of whatever project we do. She said my second draft was excellent but the third draft is what contains my legal argument and she hasn't seen that yet. I'm doing an appellate brief on a criminal case to my state's supreme court. So, all she has seen so far is the Coversheet, Index, Table of Authorities, Questions Presented, Statement of the Case, Statement of the Grounds for Appellate Review, Statement of the Facts, and the Summary of Argument. She is supposed to be reviewing the crux of my paper which is the Argument, Conclusion, and Certificates. There is potentially a ton of changes she could suggest to the legal argument portion of my paper and if her comments resulted in my needing to do additional legal research, I wanted to have the time to research thoroughly. Now I just have one weekend left. If she was taking the entire week off for the 4th, it would have been nice to know that in advance. I busted my butt trying to get that draft in on Tuesday so she'd have time to review it and provide feedback before the holiday. I know I'm playing my little violin here but .

[Westerner]

Ah, I see now. That's hard Hope you get it figured out and have enough time to complete a stellar project!

[FallingWaters]

This Capstone is my first TESC course as well and it took my prof 5 weeks to respond to my first email, and when I received a response, it was literally one word. I am beyond frustrated.

Hope you have better luck.

[soliloquy]

See that's the thing. I don't think I'm at the point where I can really complaint. I think COSC's policy is that they have one week from the submission date to give you feedback on assignments. Her one week will be tomorrow. If it had been 5 weeks, I probably would have complained. But, then you have to wonder if the instructor will try to retaliate against you for complaining.

Did you ask a yes or no question and their reply was just yes or no? I would be very annoyed as well. Sometimes I wonder if they realize we are actually paying for these classes and that this isn't some kind of volunteer tutoring.

[Bibby]

At my (brick and mortar) college, most professors say they'll respond to e-mails within 48 hours, and most of them are good at responding to questions in a timely fashion. Key word: most. Some take a lot longer than that.

[Tedium]

I asked my IDS 101 professor a question halfway through the term and she never e-mailed me back. This is a side gig to B&M jobs for a lot of these adjuncts, so we get the short end of the stick which sucks for us because we are paying so much for classes like you said. I think it's incredibly frustrating and rude, especially when you are at the final stretch. I am so grateful that I got the opportunity to finish my degree online, but there really are some kinks that need to be ironed out of e-learning.

I hope yours gets more responsive.

[soliloquy]

She responded on Monday with a forward which she apparently sent on July 3 (the same date I asked the question). For some reason I never received her email so she forwarded it to me. I don't know what happened but it all turned out okay. I'm glad I didn't throw a tantrum (except on this board). lol