Use of electronic communications for official correspondence with students.

Introduction and Purpose:

There is an expanding reliance on electronic communication among students, faculty, staff, and administrators at North Central Texas College.  This is motivated by the convenience, speed, cost-effectiveness, and environmental advantages of using electronic communications rather than printed communication. Further, NCTC has experienced a wider geographic dispersion of students resulting in a direct need to communicate reliably and consistently via email.  Because of this increasing reliance on and acceptance of electronic communication, it is considered an official means for communication within NCTC and our students.

Implementation of this policy ensures that students have access to this critical—if not essential—form of communication. This policy will ensure that all students can access, and be accessed by email and other electronic means of communications, as the need arises.  This is especially relevant as it relates to disseminating critical college-related information.

Policy:
The student email policy provides guidelines regarding the following aspects of electronic communications as an official means of communication with students:

• NCTC use of email;
• Assignment of student email addresses;
• Expectations of email communication between faculty and student, staff and student, and administrators and students.
• Announcements and targeted messages in myNCTC (the North Central Texas College campus portal)

1. All students currently enrolled at North Central Texas College are required to have email addresses, as outlined below.

2. College use of email the myNCTC portal is the official college means of communication with students. Students must check regularly for targeted announcements and email communication from the college at a minimum of twice per week. Students have the responsibility to recognize that certain communications may be time-critical.  As stewards of the email system, the Vice President for Student Services, is responsible for approving the usage of student email.

3. Assignment of student email
Official college email accounts will be created automatically for all enrolled students with the implementation of the Student Portal.

4. Expectations about student use of email
Students are expected to check their email no less frequently than twice a week in order to stay current with College-related communications.  Students have the responsibility to recognize that certain communications may be time-critical. Failure to check for messages and failure to receive messages due to full mailboxes or auto-forwarded email are not acceptable excuses for missing official College communications.  Students may auto-forward email to an outside email client at their own risk. The college IT staff and Help Desk do not support auto-forwarding of email and will not assist in troubleshooting problems with outside email clients or forwarded email.

5. Authentication for confidential information
It is a violation of College policy for any user of official email addresses to impersonate a College office, faculty/staff member, or student. 

6. Privacy
Email users should exercise extreme caution in using email to communicate confidential or sensitive matters, and should not assume that email is private and confidential.  It is especially important that users be careful to send messages only to the intended recipient(s).  Particular care should be taken when using the "reply" command during email correspondence, because many mailing lists are configured to deliver replies to the entire list, not just the author of a given message.

7. Educational uses of email
Faculty will determine how electronic forms of communication (e.g., email, myNCTC course announcements, chats and message boards) will be used in their classes, and will specify their requirements in the course syllabus.  This official student electronic communications policy will ensure that all students are able to comply with electronic-based course requirements specified by faculty.  Faculty can therefore make the assumption that students' official email and myNCTC accounts are being accessed and they can use email, myNCTC, course announcements, chats and message boards for their classes accordingly.

8. Activation of myNCTC and NCTC Student Email Accounts

Activation of student myNCTC and NCTC Student Email accounts are mandatory and can be activated and access by clicking here http://www.nctc.edu/Infosystems/stu-faq.htm