I've noticed that the amount of student cyberstress is directly proportional to the quality of the course design. I teach an introduction to computers course for two online universities each with its own standards of how the course should be set up, the number of assignments, grading rubrics and late assignment policies. At University A, which could use a little more work on their course design, I get quite a few emails every term from frantic students who are trying to finish an assignment and the instructions are unclear or the submission method is not evident. Since I can’t change the course design, I try to anticipate potential problems in announcements and discussions. I also create some quick online tutorials using Jing – a free screen / video capture tool. If you haven’t used Jing – it’s a great program when you need to show a student how to do something. You capture a video of your actions on your computer, it automatically gets uploaded to screencast.com, and you can send your student a link to that video. Did I mention it’s free? I know I’m digressing but I can’t help evangelizing some of these incredible software tools. At University B – which has an excellent system in place for course design and review, I hardly ever get emails from students; the course interaction focuses on the discussion topics because the students know the mechanics of the course and all instructions are very effective. Also, the university has a very good student orientation course which plays a key role in reducing the amount of “cyberstress.”