Uniarts Helsinki introduces an email etiquette – the community can use Teams for discussions and for sharing information
Last autumn, our community engaged in discussions on political involvement and influencing and the use of internal communication platforms. The discussions highlighted the need to have a clearer mutual understanding on which forums we should use for various kinds of internal discussions within the university community and which ground rules we should follow.
At the same time, it is important to support multi-voiced discussion and the encountering of different perspectives and perspectives so that each member of the community can choose the discussions in which they participate. University offers all members of the university a joint team on Teams where people can have internal discussions on various themes and post messages even on topics that are not related to work and studies. The wish for a discussion space that crosses academy boundaries was also expressed in the Student Union’s statement in November 2023. Read the Student Union’s statement.
Even before the discussions last autumn, the university had started preparing e-mail etiquette. In particular, its aim has been to curb the flood of emails and guarantee a safe working and studying environment for the entire community.
Main points of the email etiquette
- Email lists are intended for informing people of matters of the university and the academies, not for discussing matters collectively or for giving feedback. Email lists should not be used for sharing political messages, either. The use of email lists for political activities is only permitted in university elections and in the activities of student organisations related to the Student Union or in trade union activities.
- If your message concerns a large group of students, the news article is added to the Students’ Uniarts website. If you do not have the rights to edit the Students’ Uniarts website, send the text to artsi@uniarts.fi, and the news will be added to the website.
- Try to arrange things so that you only send emails on weekdays. Nobody needs to read or reply to messages in the evenings or during the weekends.
- Many people’s inbox is absolutely flooded with emails, so always try to take a moment to consider who definitely needs to be informed of the matter at hand and who does not. Do not add people as recipients just in case.
The email etiquette was written based on the academies’ existing etiquettes and the terms of use of the university’s IT systems. The email etiquette was prepared based on consultations of the academy boards, the university’s chief shop stewards and the members of the Cooperation Council in autumn 2023.
A shared team on Teams for the whole community’s discussions and announcements
We want to offer students and employees a place where everyone can engage in a range of internal discussions and post announcements on students’ topical artistic activities, for example, across academy lines. To this end, we have set up a shared team on Teams titled “Taideyliopisto”. The group will continue to have its own channel for students under the name “Students -Students”, which students can use for discussion and advertising across academy boundaries.
We will update the Artsi intranet and the front page of the Students’ Uniarts website with a link to the team. We encourage everyone to be frequent users of Teams and to have active discussions on the platform.
The Teams pilot will continue throughout 2024, and we will have our first review on how well it has worked in summer 2024.
General guidelines for using the team on Teams
- Read the rules of the team. The moderators of the team – the university’s communications team – have the right to delete messages that violate the rules.
- If you do not have Teams installed on your computer, read the guidelines for installing Microsoft applications on the Students’ Uniarts website.
- You can also install Teams on your phone.
- If you want to stop receiving notifications on new messages, you can update your settings by selecting “Channel notifications” (first click on the three dots next to the channel name).
- Work- and study-related news are still published on the Artsi intranet and on the Students’ Uniarts website. Do not publish the same text both on Artsi and on Teams.
You can send feedback and questions about the platform to artsi@uniarts.fi.