Review : Problem Resolution Through Electronic Mail
Lulu
liuliu@hawaii.edu
Introductionliuliu@hawaii.edu
In this essay I will review the paper: Problem Resolution Through Electronic Mail: A Five-Step Model’ by Neal Grandgenett and Don Grandgenett. Collectively, the paper analyzes the electronic mail’s advantages and disadvantages, and with a scenario of using electronic mail to approach resolving the problem, it generalizes the five step models for education and training environments.
Summary
As the paper serves specifically for school and training environment, the article can be visualized as the picture below.
The paper first analyzes the three benefits of using the electronic mail for resolving conflict/problem, such as fast response, advantage of written communication and flexibility of linking to the other information. Then it examines the additional problems the electronic mails might bring, such as tone misunderstanding between sender and receiver, distrust between the sender and the receiver, the manipulative feeling the receivers might feel and the misreading of the content by the receiver. At last, the paper gives us a five-step model of writing a well-structured and effective electronic mail, which is considered as answering the five questions listed below:
- What is the problem? – the problem title
- What makes it a problem? – the problem summary
- What can be done? – the resolution examination
- What should be done? – the preferable resolution of the problem
- What will be done? – the bottom line to the situation
Critical analysis
The mind map shows the critical analysis of the article with the red font, and it can be enlarged by clicking the picture.
As the paper presents that one of the benefits of using electronic emails in school is because people at school and training organizations turn to use the electronic mail a lot. Then the question how often for a professor to read emails from students may be asked? What if the staff is on vacation or in a conference? If the situation is urgent, the e-mail probably will be a drag for the whole problem resolution. Especially when the conflict is from below (such as from student, new faculties) to above, the answer of the electronic mail might be delayed comparing with versus.
Secondly, writing communication do requires more thinking process, which may help the clarity of the language, but the limitation of the text communication also weakens the electronic mail’s effectiveness. The reference to support the effectiveness of text communication is from an article used by Vogel back in 1988, which really not convincing enough for nowadays school and training organization environment. (Need a reference of growing use of the internet/multi-media at school and training organization). Comparing with the text, the voice and images can carry richer content, with multidimensional senses to address the content of the problem, the degree of the urgency, as well as the severity of the problem. Thus, when the hardware allows, if the sender well drafts the content of the text and voice/image message before sending/calling/posting to the receiver, there is no significant advantage of the text communication.
Thirdly, the use of voice and image can actually avoid the conflict aroused by misunderstanding and distrusting between sending and receiving agents. As it mentioned in the last point, voice and image can carry richer information to address the different aspects of the problem, so as to resolve the problem in a more efficient way.
Last, the author generalized all kinds of training environment into this one 5-steps model without considering the culture of the organization or the manner of the administration. It is very important to consider the ethnocultural perspectives when communicating with cross culture agents.
Resolution
The mind map picture below shows the resolution of the critical aspect of electronic mails with the blue fonts. Click the picture to enlarge the picture.
First of all, as the article mentioned, the misunderstanding of the tone actually can be resolved by using other means of communication, such as the voice mail, phone call, online message, text message, twitter or online forum so on so forth with the rich content supporting. As mentioned before, sound and graphics will carry more information and emotion, as well as to avoid the misunderstanding. So, using other means instead of relying on e-mail can avoid misunderstanding and mis-communication.
Then, the use of open discussion can avoid the negative feeling of mistrusting that the text of the message is being copied to others inappropriately. This mistrust may slow down the receiver’s working efficiency (Need some references), which brings whole another privacy issue. Except the forum, Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is actually a good model to use for the whole school system to communicate, so that the flow of the message will be clear enough for everyone without confusing or delay. Of course, if the ERP is not viable, democratic open group email sending is also a good option, to avoid the receiver’s insecure feeling.
Additionally, the school or training organizations can try is through forum. It’s a very open voluntary way of communication. Combining the forum news publishing system with RSS feed subscription the receiver will be notified when the subscribed forum has some new messages.
Last but not the least, web 2.0 can also be an powerful communication tool. It integrates email, forums, RSS and instant message systems into a collaborative environment for users communicating and networking
Questions for further research
1. As Web 2.0 enters life, open social is a trendy way of communication. How the school use the web 2.0 to communicate and resolve the problem is a new area to research into.
2. and individuality are the focus of some culture, while sharing and opening are the focus of some other cultures, how will these two cultures communicate with emails?
3. Globalization brings a challenge of e-mail communication. Not everyone is good at Latin language text communication. What the model of e-mail should be like, when resolving the cross culture and cross languages problems.
4. Can a school organization address collaboration, coordination and cooperation, for creative leaderships?
References:
Grandgenett N., and Grandgenett, D., (2001), Problem Resolution Through Electronic Mail: A Five-Step Model, Innovations in Education and Teaching Internationa. , ISSN 1470-3297 print ISSN 1470-3300 online © 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd.
Menchaca, M., (2008), ETEC 645 Website, http://etec.hawaii.edu/otec/classes/645/10.05.08.htm
Other entries about emails:
http://artemispeace.blogspot.com/2008/10/etec-645-draft-for-funelectronic-mail.html
http://artemispeace.blogspot.com/2008/10/this-is-dos-and-donts-email-season.html
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