"Please read the syllabus" is probably the most common sentence sent by instructors in response to student e-mail questions. Theoretically, if the syllabus is constructed carefully, many queries can be anticipated, at least when it comes to class policies, deadlines, and how the grade is determined.
As for "What is my grade right now?" and "Am I going to pass?" it is likely that "Please come to class, as we go over all tests and review grades during this time" must be perpetually automatic to the teacher's fingertips.
Syllabi are now online, of course, due to a recent law passed by the Legislature, but it's hard to detect any decline in questions sent directly to professors. (Online instruction is sort of a special case, since digital communications are the whole story.)
A start-up Web site called Piazza aims to organize communications between instructors and students. Aside from those syllabus-related queries, there are times when a class is working on a common assignment and there may be a need to answer common questions, make adjustments, and move the participants in the right direction as a group.
The free site purports to do a better job than course management packages with message boards such as Blackboard. Piazza's creator, Pooja Sankar, a recent Stanford MBA graduate, was profiled in the Chronicle of Higher Education, in an article by Jeffrey R. Young. The piece might be worth a look.
Ms. Sankar says there are no plans currently for the site to go commercial.
From the Chronicle piece:
At first blush, the service seems unnecessary. Students can already e-mail questions to professors or fellow students, and most colleges already own course-management systems like Blackboard that include discussion features. But Ms. Sankar feels that such options are clunky. She says professors are finding that Piazza can save them hours each week by allowing them to post answers to a single online forum rather than handle a scattershot of student e-mails.
Piazza is a Web site that refreshes with updates as new questions or answers come in. Professors simply set up a free discussion area for their course on the service at the beginning of the term and invite their students to set up free accounts to participate. Ms. Sankar says that students typically keep Piazza open on their screens as they work on homework, often staying on the site for hours at a time.