Investigating how undergraduates process their e-mail inbox

Students receive e-mails from a variety of university sources that include information about courses, policies and procedures, and useful resources or opportunities. However, this information is sent without consideration of whether students have effective strategies to successfully translate it into action. Most research and resources related to undergraduate e-mail use focus on message composition, but limited work centres on how they manage their inbox, a private and unobservable process. Whether students can translate information about opportunities and resources into action has implications for their engagement and involvement on campus and success in their academic program. Thus, understanding how students process their inbox is potentially important for driving student integration and success. We have performed 18 qualitative interviews with undergraduate students regarding how they manage their inbox, including 1) the strategies and processes used, 2) how they learned to process their e-mail, and 3) positive and negative consequences associated with successful or unsuccessful inbox management. We find students vary widely when it comes to e-mail management. However, we find that students’ experiences with e-mail follow Expectancy Value Theory, where the likelihood that a student translates an e-mail into an action is primarily dictated by whether they perceive value in the received message and whether they can take the necessary action (e.g., attend an event, use a resource, pay a late fee, etc.). We find that students vary in their perceptions and abilities to act. Building off this framework, we describe this variation and its implications for student success. This research was approved by our institutional research ethics board REB #22-12-023.