As your students participate in your online class, it is important to set and maintain your class expectations. In my online classroom, students participate in discussion boards, create videos, and peer review each other’s work. Because they interact with each other so often, I find that it is important to set expectations regarding Netiquette in the first week of classes. Netiquette, or “internet etiquette”, are the rules of interacting while online. In my course, I have boiled this down to 5 rules:

5 Rules of Netiquette:

1. Remember the human behind the screen.

2. Secure your secrets.

3. Give credit!

4. The internet is an extension of society. The internet isn’t a new world in which anything goes, but rather, a new dimension of the world around us.

5. Verify facts!

I typically show the following video, then hold a class discussion about students’ experiences with others online. Most of our students are familiar with the concepts of trolling, spamming, and what it looks like when someone is disrespectful online. During this discussion, I am sure to equate the poor netiquette examples to what this might look like in a brick in mortar classroom or “real life.” This will often lead to a discussion on what will happen if someone breaks our netiquette (both how students acknowledge it in the moment AND the consequences from the teacher) and we are able to make it a part of our class contract or just our general classroom culture. After the discussion, I have my students write a short reflection about whether or not netiquette is necessary or if they can think of any new rules that need to be added.