Netiquette Best Practices

Model good netiquette as you communicate with your students and set guidelines and expectations for them.

What you say online is difficult to retract later; be judicious in your online communications.

Know the basics; many conventions have been established.

• Do not type in all caps, this is considered shouting and it makes text difficult to read.
• Acronyms and emoticons are useful to express emotions, but excessive use of them can make messages difficult to read.
• Always proofread for correct grammar and spelling. Capitalize your sentence and use appropriate punctuation. Refrain from using multiple !!!! or ????????
• Always fill in the subject with a concise statement describing the email.

Use formal language; the increased use of texting has led to many students treating all online communications the same way as texting; using abbreviations and slang. But the nature of the student/teacher relationship calls for more formal language.

If you receive a nasty email, do not respond when you feel angry. Seek clarification before reacting or draft something and come back to it. If you cannot respond with something nice or constructive or strictly professional, just hit delete.

Send out an email to a group using the blind carbon copy field – BCC does not allow your recipients to view who was sent the email so that the recipient gets a copy of the email while their email address remains invisible from the view of the other recipients. This technique is apparent in that the recipients do not see any addresses. Refrain from using the BCC as a method of “secretly” copying someone on an email; this would be similar to not identifying the people that are on the line on a conference call.

Always begin your emails with a friendly greeting such as “Hello,” “Good morning;” and end your emails with "Thank you," "Sincerely," "Thanks in advance," "Best regards" – something. And sign off using your name (or incorporate into your signature file that is automatically appended to the end of every email (name, role, location, phone numbers).

Refrain from formatting with colored text, background images or colors. Using these techniques can make emails difficult to read and also difficult to reply to without having to convert to plain text.

Please click the link, Center for Teaching Excellence to read additional information about Netiquette for Online Learning.

Photo Attribution
Description: Communicating online, 3-D Word Quiz
Source: iStock.com, Thinkstock.com