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Just surfing the net to find useful resources, came across to the university course page, and course materials were well explained. However, when trying to download them, Unfortunately, there was a canvas page to do the university authorization.

  • Is it a mistake to ask the instructor for the course contents, despite not being a professor's student?
  • Well, if that is not a problem, Is there any suggestion or recommendation with how speaking and using words or expressions in email text might make it better?
  • Should there be an EDU email or other Email service providers are safe?
  • What if they did not answer? Is it right to keep doing it again?

Any help would be appreciated.

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  1. It is definitely not a mistake to ask the instructor for his course notes. From what I know it is common practice to do this and many professors and grad students do this on a regular basis even if you are not a student taking that course.
  2. I would recommend you take a straightforward approach, there's no need to beat around the bush. Introduce yourself to the instructor being clear about your intentions with his course notes. If there are some certain parts of the course you are more interested in, remember to mention them as they might be more comfortable sharing some parts of the content rather than the whole thing.
  3. An EDU email could be better but it depends on the circumstances. If you are a professor teaching a similar course at some other university, the instructor might have his concerns regarding sharing content but if you work in industry and there's no chance of stealing their work they might be okay with sharing it.
  4. If they don't answer you can drop another email after some time (I usually give people a week before sending a polite reminder email). However if you don't get a reply for your second email, I personally wouldn't keep sending them emails.

I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you have any more questions.

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I see no harm in asking, but personally I would find it weird if someone outside the university asked me for all my course materials.

Building a course is a lot of work. There are multitudes of open-access education resources that I could post to if I felt so inclined. But teaching the course is part of what I do for a living, at my place of work no less.

So, it can't hurt to try an email, but I wouldn't go into it with high expectations, nor would I keep after the professor. I think you'll be more likely to be successful if you simply explain your interest in them specifically, and why you can't get the material elsewhere.

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