Marc, I do require students in some of my classes to submit work by e-mail. In all of my classes I tell students that I prefer to receive work submitted electronically. We do have college wide facilities to support the students' use of computer technology, including e-mail, that allows me to do that. Many of my students are initially concerned about their ability to use the computers and software at this level, but they learn fairly quickly and achieve at least some comfort with the process. Our e-mail system is standardized on Outlook which seems to be one of the most vulnerable e-mail systems. Our Information Technology folks are very knowledgeable about threats to this system and work to screen out viruses by using a good virus protection program on our e-mail servers. I also use an anti-virus program on my own machine which scans files as they are opened. It also scans my hard drive weekly (so it will scan all of the student files before I open them and then again before I return them) and automatically downloads new virus definitions monthly. I would not consider accepting electronic documents from anyone without this level of protection. My virus protection program has identified viruses in student files in the past. In all of those cases we were able to isolate and "cure" the problem. My most recent "invasions" have not arrived in student work attachments but from other e-mail attachments from friends and one obvious Melissa like attack. None of them had any effect on my system. Good luck Dennis Dennis M. Goff Dept. of Psychology Randolph-Macon Woman's College Lynchburg, VA 24503 -----Original Message----- From: G. Marc Turner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 1999 11:38 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: computer viruses & accepting assignments via email Now, for the teaching relevance...well, somewhat teaching related... I have been toying with the idea of accepting assignments via email. I vaguely remember other TIPSters saying that they do this. My main hesitation has been the virus threat. I have had students send me stuff via email in the past which has been infected. If I do move to accepting assignments via email I feel that I would have to insist on students making sure that they maintain their antivirus software to help prevent spreading viruses to me that could damage or destroy other students papers. For example, if I opened a word document that was infected with a macro virus, it could damage/destroy papers other students had submitted. I was curious how those who are currently accepting assignments via email handle the virus issue. Do you request students to scan documents for viruses prior to submission? Do you inform them of the potential threat of viruses? (Also, I would not require students to submit assignments this way since many of our students are not terribly computer literate.) Thanks for your input... - Marc G. Marc Turner, MEd Lecturer & Head of Computer Operations Department of Psychology Southwest Texas State University San Marcos, TX 78666 phone: (512)245-2526 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
