Is email and mobile learning (mLearning) making students dumb?

Here is an interesting question: Is access to the Internet, mLearning, and email making students dumb?

The reason I ask this question is because I seem to get increasing number of emails from students these days that are basically 'dumb' questions. Now don't get me wrong, I like receiving emails from students, particularly the ones of the type: "How does leptin work in the control of appetite?", or "What is the role of AS160 in Glut4 trafficking?" (If you want to know the answers to either of those questions then please email me). However, I do despair at the emails I receive that are what I term as 'procedural'. Emails such as: "How long is the exam going to be?"; or "When is the work due in?". Both these last examples could be easily looked up by the student because they are available on the VLE (virtual learning environment - see "Do you speak my language: V is for Volume, Vapourware, Virus, VoIP, VNC, VPN, VLE, Virtual Campus"), they are in the student handbook, and the information has already been sent by email.

When I was a student (which admittedly last century) we didn't have the luxury of email or the Internet. There was no such thing as an electronic version of your lectures, be it a PDF that you could download with all the notes and slides, or a recording of the lecture. If you wanted a copy of the lecture you either had to persuade one of your classmates to lend you their notes and photocopy them, or even better still, turn up to the lecture yourself and make your own notes.

Now with VLEs, and live recordings of lectures being produced by universities, the students don't need to be in the lecture room (or even on campus), and they have instant access to the material they need to pass the exams and get their degree. So, theoretically students have more time to do their work as they have everything they need at their fingertips, as opposed to in my day when I had to turn up to lectures and it may take me 2 hours to track down a relevant paper in the library whereas now it is a five minute search of PubMed. So, why the 'dumb' ('procedural') questions?

Well, I have two theories:

I personally think that theory number 2 is the correct one as I have never met a student yet that has received a good training in handling electronic information, plus I think staff may be posting the information in the wrong place. For example, email is easy, we all do it, but do we use it in the best possible way (I touched on this in "Why don't people get computers? Get your computer to work for you!")? Have students been trained in the effective use of email? Have students been trained in the best ways to handle and store relevant documents so they can be easily searched (I would personally recommend Evernote - see "Software I use: Evernote" and "Software I use: More on Evernote - teaching, research and students")?. And more worryingly - do students even use email? (The expression and idea that "I only use email to communicate with old people" has been floating around since 2007 and was nicely covered in a New York Times article in - "E-Mail Gets an Instant Makeover" in 2010).

So, what to do?

Well, may be we (staff and students) need to revisit and rethink about where email fits in to our lives? Are we using email effectively? Can we make better use of what is in fact a very useful and powerful system?

There have been a number of articles over the years on the use of email (e.g. see "Five steps to an organised inbox" and "This column will change your life: the secret to winning the war on email - Inbox bursting? The solution is simple...", and the use of email in teaching and the move to instant messaging (e.g. "How Will Students Communicate?"), but I think one of the best places to start is with the Email Charter, which if adopted could get people using email efficiently and effectively.

What is your view on the use of email in teaching? Is it working? Is there something better we could (should) use? Why not share your views and comments below?