This week in class I read about the 10 core rules of Netiquette, and while I had never seen the benefit of Netiquette before. I was definitely turned around and this is now something that I want to apply in my online classroom.

The part that probably stood out most to me was the discussion of “Time and Bandwidth”. Here Shea talks about how while engaged in online conversations, we need to be sure to respect others time and energy by keeping on-topic with our conversations. I would not want any of my students to have to waste anytime digging through a discussion board in order to find material that is relevant to them — much in the same way that I don’t want to spend 5 minutes digging through their email to try to find their question. It mirrors the situation that we have in the classroom: If I have a student that is going off on a tangent and taking up a lot of time from the rest of the class, I need to curtail it in order to keep the classroom on task.

I think that I will definitely include a statement on netiquette in the syllabus of my next online class.