Netiquette for this Class

Netiquette is an informal collection of policies to facilitate best practices for communicating and navigating an online course. This is not a comprehensive list and is only a highlight of a few things that might be useful.

• Communication should be as clear and concise as possible. A good idea is to review any communication before you post or send as an email.

• Almost every communication platform has spell check .

• Course communications are not text messages and all communications should meet the standards of grammar and capitalization.

• Documents should be in formats that are accessible: Microsoft Word, PDF, and tex files are all acceptable formats for this course. Taking pictures of documents to be used as submissions for an assessment should be cleared in advance of the submission.

• Avoid capitalizing whole words in posts or in emails. This practice is interpreted as shouting in electronic communications and are often interpreted as threatening. Using a different font, use of boldface, use of italics, or use of underlining, can place a similar emphasis in the message and avoid the stigma associated with all caps.

• Be respectful of others. It is perfectly fine to disagree, but you should voice your disagreement in a respectful tone.

• If there is something that inspires a great deal of passion (or anger) then you should wait 24 hours before responding so that you have time to reflect on your message. Avoid escalating situations and also avoid personal attacks.

• Be careful using humor and sarcasm. It is often difficult to convey humor in an electronic communication and it takes time to build up rapport where humor can be used successfully.

• Strive to be concise.

• Avoid the use of emojis.

• Be timely in your correspondence. An email sent on a weekday should generally have a response within 24 hours. It is also reasonable to expect that something sent on Friday will not have a response until Monday. It is often the case people are busy and so it is also acceptable that the response to an email could include a short message to note you are currently swamped with other work and include a timeline on when you plan to respond fully.

• Be patient. It is not reasonable to expect immediate responses to posts or emails. You should generally allow at least 24 hours for a response and again the weekend might result on waiting for a response until Monday.

• It is against school policy to engage in harassment and/or discriminatory behavior. If you encounter this type of behavior then please notify the instructor or an appropriate university authority.