To better facilitate communication, collaboration and resource sharing among faculty
development professionals throughout the state, TFDN is pleased to announce the
availability of our new listserv. We are grateful to the Academic Center for Excellence
in Teaching (ACET) at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio for its role in developing
and sponsoring this electronic mailing list (listserv) for us. The listserv is public,
meaning anyone can subscribe. Please pass this information on to anyone else at
your institution and in your broader professional circle who may be interested in
promoting and improving faculty development in higher education. All list activity,
including archives, joining or leaving the list, and subscription management can
be accessed at http://lists.uthscsa.edu/archives/tfdn-l.html .
How we use the list is largely up to the membership. However, there are some general
guidelines and etiquette:.
- Always, ALWAYS, check to see who the message is going out to. Sending a message
to hundreds of people when you intended to send it only to the original author can
be embarrassing at best. Look at the To: line and make sure it’s going out to the
right people. Likewise, don’t send list commands to the TFDN-L address; those should
go to listserv@lists.uthscsa.edu .
- When responding to a message, edit quoted material (i.e., the previous emails) to
include only the vital bits. You can indicate your edits with a little “….snip”.
Everyone will know you’ve cut out original text. Resending a two hundred line string
of responses is redundant and unnecessary, particularly if your only comment is
“I agree completely”.
- If you are straying from the original conversation or question, don’t “reply”, but
start a new thread with a new subject line.
- Use the subject line to give an accurate, concise, and meaningful approximation
of your message. Remember that these will be archived, and subject lines like “Did
everyone see this???” or “Good journal article!” won’t be of much help to users.
- Limited commercial messages. If you’re selling non-educational products or services,
this isn’t the place to do it. However, reasonable exceptions include such uses
as posting a job announcement, recommending a textbook, promoting a faculty development
related conference, workshops or similar teaching and learning activity.
- No attachments. You can include links to an original source or direct readers in
some other way, but do not include an attachment in your list message.
- No copyrighted material. If you don’t include attachments, this shouldn’t be an
issue. Cite the work of others appropriately.
We look forward to the potential this list offers and welcome your input and recommendations
for making the most of this new resource.