Back to Promising Practices
Expectations for Online Behavior
Why?
- The instructor cannot assume that students know how to effectively and efficiently communicate in the online course.
- Communicating these expectations makes it easier for students to define acceptable versus unacceptable online behaviors.
- Clear expectations clarify acceptable and unacceptable behaviors before the behaviors occur.
- Clearly communicated expectations reduce the amount of individual questions over the course of the semester.
Implications for Teaching and Learning.
-
Determine if you want to create a set of rules and procedures for participating in the discussion board.
-
Determine if you want to define rules and procedures for email communications.
-
Define spelling and grammar expectations for online communications.
-
Define “acceptable tone” for online communications.
Promising Practices for TWU.
Place Expectations for Online Behavior in your course in some manner.
How?
Clearly defining the online behaviors you expect from students in your course is important. By including these expectations in the course, instructors can proactively address online behavior before it becomes a problem. Even more importantly, instructors can define and illustrate the types of online behaviors encouraged in the course.
There are a variety of ways to include Expectations for Online Behavior into your distance course. In fact, these expectations can be placed in almost any location in the course. We encourage these expectations to be visible and to appear early in the course.
TWU instructional design has created a simple way for you to emphasize this important course element. A downloadable .zip file with detailed instructions is available for your use. This file will create a menu item within your course titled Course Policies. Within this section is a content item titled Expectations for Online Behavior. You will be able to include your personal expectations within this section.
- Derived from the Quality Matters Rubric for Online and Hybrid Courses FY 06/07
Standard I.3
Back to Promising Practices
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.