Giving Gen-Ed Students Your Personal Phone Number

[the_geneticist]

Nope, nope, nope!  Not giving students my personal cell number for so many reasons.
I insist that all communication with students has to be using their official campus email.  Zoom is fine too.  Or they can leave a voice message on my office phone that goes to my work email.

If the department is insisting that students MUST be able to reach me by phone, then they can buy me a pre-paid phone. 

[Diogenes]

Get a Google Voice number! https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/23/18411138/google-voice-how-to-use-grandcentral-secondary-phone-number-voicemail-texts-sms

I have only given out my cell number and got student's numbers for safety and logistics when I taught a field study class that required travel.

[onehappyunicorn]

Absolutely not, and as a supervisor over our part-time faculty I make it clear that students should not have their personal numbers either. There are just too many issues that can happen and have happened in the past. There are people here who still talk about a part-time instructor who went on a spring break trip with a student and that incident is pushing 15 years ago now, well before all but one person who works in our department was even here. The full-time faculty have calls forwarded from their office phones but rarely do students even call now, the vast majority email.

That is a total tease.

Let's have the full spring break story!

Hah, I didn't mean to tease and I don't have a lot of the details as I wasn't here then. Essentially there was a part-time instructor who was rather popular with several female students in his class and was flirting with two of them via text message and social media, apparently unbeknownst to each other. He invited one of the students to Florida with him over our school's spring break and the other student who was flirting with him got upset when she found out so she reported him. The woman he did invite then found out that he was also flirting with this other female student so she turned over all of the messages he had sent her to our administration.
I understand that it was a very entertaining meeting when he was pulled in to discuss the situation with the chair, dean, and vice-president. Apparently he tried to deny it all at first until presented with print outs of his conversations. He was escorted off campus and someone else had to take over his classes mid-semester.
We have a departmental policy that faculty cannot be connected with active students via social media, we only make exceptions for approved projects. This is also why we require that the school email and our LMS be the only way faulty communicate with students in the virtual world.

[Charlotte]

We have a departmental policy that faculty cannot be connected with active students via social media, we only make exceptions for approved projects.

I definitely understand this policy and think it's a good practice to not be connected with students on social media, but is that something the department is actively checking on and will enforce?

[onehappyunicorn]

We have a departmental policy that faculty cannot be connected with active students via social media, we only make exceptions for approved projects.

I definitely understand this policy and think it's a good practice to not be connected with students on social media, but is that something the department is actively checking on and will enforce?

I give out multiple warnings, including in the guide for processes that I send out every semester. In practice I don't actively search or hunt down faculty interactions online or anything, it's hopefully understood that I had better not hear that faculty are breaking the rule. We will enforce it if I find out about it, we have in the past, though I've only had to write up one person on it and they were already in trouble for other stupidity.
We have one part-time instructor in particular who was not invited back to teach in part due to his refusal to stop using his personal email to communicate with students.

[clean]

Do phone books still exist? 
IF they do, then they have your number (though I d be surprised if they could actually find one!)
The electronic ones I ve seen seem to take forever and then only tease me with a phone number held hostage to a recurring fee.

[Caracal]

We have a departmental policy that faculty cannot be connected with active students via social media, we only make exceptions for approved projects.

I definitely understand this policy and think it's a good practice to not be connected with students on social media, but is that something the department is actively checking on and will enforce?

I give out multiple warnings, including in the guide for processes that I send out every semester. In practice I don't actively search or hunt down faculty interactions online or anything, it's hopefully understood that I had better not hear that faculty are breaking the rule. We will enforce it if I find out about it, we have in the past, though I've only had to write up one person on it and they were already in trouble for other stupidity.
We have one part-time instructor in particular who was not invited back to teach in part due to his refusal to stop using his personal email to communicate with students.

I don't have any problem with that policy, but it seems like it is one of those things that is better understood as a symptom than a cause. I could carry out all my class business through text messages and friend all my students and I still wouldn't flirt with any of them or invite them to Florida. I'm sure teachers who want to do those things aren't going to be put off by rules against texting students.

Presumably, the real point of the rules is to allow the school to fire the creepy person who is sending lots of texts messages to a student without having to prove there's anything more going on. There are also other reasons for it, potentially involving things like FERPA and record keeping laws at public universities. I'm sure in practice, nobody is really going to get in trouble for giving their number to the student in the hospital or so the student can find them at the field site.

It usually is a very bad sign when people won't follow a rule when they are wanted about it. I ignore the occasional school policy that seems dumb, but on the very rare occasions when someone in charge has stressed to me that I need to actually do something, I do it. A person who can't use the school email despite repeated warnings is almost certainly doing lots of other things they shouldn't be doing.

[Kron3007]

We have a departmental policy that faculty cannot be connected with active students via social media, we only make exceptions for approved projects.

I definitely understand this policy and think it's a good practice to not be connected with students on social media, but is that something the department is actively checking on and will enforce?

I understand the policy, but the term social media is a little vague.  Being connected via LinkedIn or researchgate seems useful as it is a good way to promote jobs placements etc. I found out I was accepted into a grad program through Facebook, but I'm sure I would have found out otherwise....

Regarding the phone number, I wouldnt give it out as a matter of course, but would if there was need.

[jerseyjay]

Before Coronavirus, I gave out a Google Voice number (which linked to my cell phone) when I was teaching online part-time at a community college in another state. Since I was never on campus, I wanted to have some way for students to contact me besides email. As a practical matter, I don't think I received any calls in which an email would not have been equally (and often more) productive.

At my current full-time job, I used to put my office phone number on my syllabus, and rarely got any calls. I would not give out my personal phone number (or a Google voice number) for most of my students. There are a few--though only in upper level classes--whom I have called and I assume that my number has appeared in their caller ID.

Back when I was in school, some professors put their phone numbers on the syllabus (which of course meant a landline back then). But back then many of my professors still did not use email.

[Caracal]

Do phone books still exist? 
IF they do, then they have your number (though I d be surprised if they could actually find one!)
The electronic ones I ve seen seem to take forever and then only tease me with a phone number held hostage to a recurring fee.

It has been ten years since I had a landline, so no. Honestly, even if I did, it wouldn't be a good way to contact me. The only person who ever called our landline when we had it was my partner, and she only called it when she was trying to reach me and my phone was out of batteries or on silent. Now when that happens, she sends me an email. It's actually the most fool proof way to get through to me. The only advantage of the phone is that by calling me you get my attention immediately (which is why I try to not let it go dead as a responsible adult), but that isn't really an issue for teaching. There's really no such thing as a teaching emergency. I really can't think of circumstances where a student actually needs to contact me immediately.

[Puget]

This whole discussion is kind of funny because most students these days are horrified at the idea of using a phone to talk to someone, certainly to someone like a professor.

[Caracal]

This whole discussion is kind of funny because most students these days are horrified at the idea of using a phone to talk to someone, certainly to someone like a professor.

Yeah, exactly. All they would do with a phone number is text-which is just a worse version of email for professional communication.

[onehappyunicorn]

Presumably, the real point of the rules is to allow the school to fire the creepy person who is sending lots of texts messages to a student without having to prove there's anything more going on. There are also other reasons for it, potentially involving things like FERPA and record keeping laws at public universities. I'm sure in practice, nobody is really going to get in trouble for giving their number to the student in the hospital or so the student can find them at the field site.

That's a bingo.

I understand the policy, but the term social media is a little vague.  Being connected via LinkedIn or researchgate seems useful as it is a good way to promote jobs placements etc. I found out I was accepted into a grad program through Facebook, but I'm sure I would have found out otherwise....

The term we use is "fraternizing with students" virtual or in-person. We do allow exceptions to the rule for things like using LinkedIn, especially for our graphic design program, or if there is some specific project that would require social media. I treat it similar to student feedback surveys in that I am looking for a pattern to identify problems. As said above, if an instructor won't listen to warnings about not using their personal email it's likely that there are other issues going on.

[jerseyjay]

This whole discussion is kind of funny because most students these days are horrified at the idea of using a phone to talk to someone, certainly to someone like a professor.

Yeah, exactly. All they would do with a phone number is text-which is just a worse version of email for professional communication.

To be honest, the idea of calling my professor was something that I found daunting while I was an undergraduate, also.

I remember that a while back, when I listed my office number on my syllabus, I had some miscommunication with a student, and when I asked why he hadn't emailed or called me, he replied that he had texted me. It had not occurred to him that my office number was a landline.

When I have put my number on syllabi, I stress that it does not receive text messages. (It actually does, but I will not read texts from students.)

[fishbrains]

I appreciate everyone's feedback and voting. I'm not sure what's going on with the admins. There must have been a "focus group" or something about "more engagement." Anyway, I feel much better now.