Online social etiquette for you and your learners.
Overview
Last week I wrote about how social distancing should not take place within the online classroom. In this post I'll discuss how netiquette should be applied when you and your learners communicate with one another through electronic messages.
Content
This post provides the following information:
Definition of Netiquette
Questions to Ask Yourself Before Sending Electronic Messages
Tips for Writing Your Own Netiquette Guidelines
Applies To
This post is written with the following individuals in mind:
Face-to-face faculty and trainers now teaching online due to current events 2020
New online faculty and trainers
Instructional staff (e.g. instructional designers, course developers, consultants, etc.) providing support to faculty teaching online
Anyone looking for new or different tips in online teaching and training
Anyone looking for opinions or a different perspective of online teaching and training
Definition of Netiquette Netiquette, also known as online or Internet etiquette, is a set of rules or guidelines for acceptable and polite communication in an online environment. Netiquette helps establish proper social manners for sending electronic messages (e.g. emails, discussion forums, comment areas, chats, review notes, etc.). It encourages pleasant, respectable, and appropriate social and technical interactions online.
Questions to Ask Yourself Before Sending Electronic Messages
To ensure that you are applying netiquette in your electronic messages, ask yourself the following questions before sending:
Who Needs to Receive My Message? It's helpful to send messages to a group or the class when you have an announcement pertaining to most learners. Some examples include upcoming due date reminders, explanation of a concept misunderstood by most learners on an assessment, notification of changes to the online classroom or scheduled event, or important news regarding the class or institution that may impact your learners. Otherwise, use "send all" or "reply all" sparingly. Don't send bulk electronic messages numerous times each day. Limit bulk messages to once daily or weekly to prevent learners from ignoring your messages as they would spam mail. However, there may be rare occasions where you'd need to send multiple messages in a day. This may be necessary if there are several topics that need to be addressed. Best practice suggests that you keep messages short and focused on one topic or few related topics. Consider your topics, the urgency of the messages, and decided if it's necessary to send multiple messages in a day, or if the messages can be sent out over several days. Email learners individually for more sensitive communication. Some examples include feedback on grades, performance, attendance, or other sensitive or confidential information specific to individual learners. Also email learners individually to let them know you recognize them and value their learning. Depending on the message, you can create a database or collection of "canned" messages, or messages you can reuse. If you have a large enrollment classroom, there's no need to send electronic messages to everyone at one time. Yet I still urge you to consider sending individual messages periodically just to let your learners know they're not invisible in a large enrollment class, even if it's just a matter or typing their name directly over a canned feedback for an assessment.
What's My Mood When I'm Writing My Message? This may seem like an odd question to ask yourself, but your mood often determines how you construct electronic messages. Negative moods such as anger, stress, and the like may encourage you to write something that's lingering on your subconscious when you ultimately don't mean for it to do so. Whether your negative mood is directed to the learner(s) or not, save your message as a draft and leave it alone for a few hours. Yes, I realize timing is essential when you need to message or reply to someone, but your mental health and cognitive thinking is more important. The message can wait a few hours. Once you've had a chance to relax and cool down, review your drafted message to make sure it's professional (related to the topic or subject matter of the message) and collegial (responsible and respectful of the person receiving the message). Avoid using all capital letters as it often implies you are yelling in a written format.
Did I Review My Message for Errors and Conciseness? Even if you were in a positive or neutral mood while composing your message, it's still important to review it for spelling, grammatical, and clarity errors. It may seem elementary of me to remind you to spell check your message, but I've seen many faculty members send messages with errors. This commonly happens when a faculty member, or anyone else, sends a quick message using their smart phone while they're on-the-go. An error-filled message comes across as unprofessional, diminishing your credibility as a reliable source of knowledge by your learners. Errors may also lead to miscommunication due to a lack of clarity in your message. Use a program like Microsoft Word or Grammarly to review your message for errors before you send it. You can even have a colleague, teaching/graduate assistant, office administrator, or friend (for non-sensitive messages) to proofread it and provide constructive critique. Also make sure your subject line relates to the context of your message in a few short words. Be precise and clear in your subject line so your message is not overlooked or ignored by your recipient. Long subject lines and the use of all caps, depending on the recipient's email client, may be automatically redirected to their spam or junk folder.
Is There a Better Way to Communicate My Message? Perhaps this question is best answered with another question: would your message be better accomplished with a phone call, web conference meeting (e.g. Zoom, Skype, Google Hangouts, etc.), video recording, or other form of communication? Truth is that sometimes it's difficult to say exactly what you need into written words clearly. Perhaps English is a second language, or like me you're just often at a loss for words. The written word is still essential for asynchronous communication, but maybe it could be paired well with another method of communication. For example, when most of my learners didn't know how to use a feature in the LMS, I wrote a message and included a link to a short, narrated video demonstrating how to use the feature. Learners had the option to read only the message or access the link for a visual further illustrating the meaning of my message.
Do I Need to Share Any Files? If you need to send large files, or many files, to your class, consider uploading to your LMS or a virtual cloud storage for file exchange. However, pay close attention to the size of the files and the size of your virtual storage. There may be limitations to the amount of virtual storage space available to you. There may also be limitations to the size or total number of files a recipient could receive via email. Bandwidth, Internet connection, and other factors determine whether a recipient can receive all, part, or no files you send them. When it comes to sending large files or multiple files in a single message, there's no guarantee that it will go through without issues. If you're in a situation where you cannot acquire more virtual storage space, you'll need to consider compressing files or only uploading and sharing select files. Another option is to swap files after a time period to ensure all files are accessible by learners. Just make sure you let learners know to download files, if allowed, within the time frame you set before the files are replaced. Take extra precaution when sending files containing confidential and sensitive information. You don't want such files ending up in the wrong inbox(es). Typically, the LMS is a secure location to share confidential and sensitive files, since all who use it authenticate their access into the LMS. If the LMS is not an option for sending such files, there are other ways you can send files securely. Many email clients and software programs allow you to encrypt electronic messages and documents. You can even simply password-protect documents using some programs, such as Microsoft Word. Check with your department or institution to identify whether there's a recommend procedure, tool, or service for sending confidential and sensitive files.
Tips for Writing Your Own Netiquette Guideline
All members of an online classroom should apply netiquette. Your learners will need to know what rules you have for applying online social etiquette as you. Before you write your own netiquette guideline, check with your institution to see if a netiquette statement already exists. If so, you can reference it in your syllabus, within your online classroom, or linked in an electronic message.
If your institution doesn't already have a netiquette statement, or there are other rules you want learners to follow for your online classroom communication, you can then write your own netiquette guideline. Several faculty members I've consulted in the past often expanded on their institution's netiquette statement. This allowed them to provide more specifics on what they personally deemed as acceptable online communication.
The "Rules of Conduct" section on my Terms of Use page is not that different from what some faculty members added to their syllabus. It consists of a bulleted list of what I personally consider to be the Do's and Don'ts of communicating within my website.
For professional development trainings I designed and delivered in the past, I kept my statement brief, limiting it to two sentences where I defined netiquette and linked to my institution's netiquette statement webpage. I then copied this information within the online classroom and linked to a short, public online video about netiquette. Below are some tips for writing your own netiquette statement:
Reference and link to your institution's netiquette statement if available.
Reference and link to external sources for applying netiquette, such as a YouTube video demonstrating the Do's and Don'ts of online communication.
Keep it short, sweet, and to the point.
List your suggested Do's and Don'ts as a bulleted list for easy reading.
Summary
Netiquette is etiquette that ensures common courtesy, respect, and polite communication in an online classroom environment. There are several questions you and your learners can ask yourselves before sending electronic messages:
Who Needs to Receive My Message?
What's My Mood When I'm Writing My Message?
Did I Review My Message for Errors?
Is There a Better Way to Communicate My Message?
Do I Need to Share Any Files?
You can check with your institution to see if a netiquette statement already exists. You can also create your own guidelines to implement in your online classroom.
Next Steps
This post only highlighted a few points about netiquette faculty I've consulted repeatedly asked me about. If you're interested in learning more, I encourage you to visit the following external sources:
Encyclopedia Britannica: Netiquette [definition]
Network Etiquette: Netiquette Rules
Ink: 15 Email Etiquette Rules Every Professional Should Follow
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Thank you for reading.
Respectfully,
Jernaley
Disclaimer: All views and opinions belong solely to Jernaley based on her own experiences, tips, and opinions. They are not representative of any person, institution, or organization Jernaley may or may not be associated with professionally or personally, unless explicitly stated and quoted.
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