Student Guidelines for Communicating in Online, Professional Contexts

This document provides guidance on appropriate ways of communicating with your classmates, teaching assistants, and instructors in online, professional contexts. It applies to email, online discussion groups, online collaborative activities, and chat forums.

Respectful Communication

• It is a sign of respect to address an instructor’s name by their professional title, such as “Dr.” or “Professor.” Some instructors will share their preference for how they would like to be addressed (e.g., by first name). Follow your instructor’s guidance and ask for clarification if needed.
• Use names as given by your classmates. If someone signs their name as “Melanie,” address them as such in your response. For individuals who have indicated pronouns (such as “he,” “she,” or “they”), use those pronouns when referring to them. See the teaching tip Gender Pronouns and Teaching.
• Do your part to maintain a professional environment. For example, if your instructor asks you to use an online tool where you can make up your own username, create a username that respects the integrity of the group.
• Keep an open mind to new perspectives and be respectful of other people’s opinions by listening carefully and responding with kindness.
• If someone writes something that you think is genuinely offensive or hateful, draw it to your instructor’s attention and seek their guidance.
• Before you communicate something in writing, ask yourself: “Would I feel comfortable saying this out loud in class?” If not, consider asking yourself, “How could I write this so that I would feel comfortable speaking it?”
• If you’re angry about something, wait until you are calm before communicating with the person or persons who have angered you. Consider whether the comment warrants a written response or if it might be more productive to reach out to the teaching team for support.

Writing Conventions

• Familiarize yourself with the University of Waterloo Inclusive Communications Guide. The Writing and Communication Centre also offers various resources and supports for students at any stage of the communication process.
• Write in a clear and concise manner. Depending on the context, full sentences are usually preferred over sentence fragments.
• In professional communications, ensure you use correct spelling and clear grammar.
• Avoid using short forms of words or phrases such as “u” instead of “you” or “lol.” Those abbreviations are fine when texting friends but not in a professional context.
• Avoid using all capital letters because it can be interpreted as yelling.
• Be careful about responding with humorous or ironic statements: they might be misinterpreted and cause offence. If you do inadvertently offend someone, apologize immediately.

Discussion Groups

• In online discussion groups and in email, make your subject line specific and descriptive rather than vague or ambiguous. For example, “Question about next Wednesday’s midterm” is a better subject line than “Question.”
• Stay on topic. If the topic of a given thread is “Napoleon’s rise to power,” don’t bring in the movie “The Fast and the Furious” – an action film centered on street racing (unless you are making a genuine and thoughtful connection).
• Don’t reply to someone’s post with just “I agree.” Instead, explain why you agree, or explain why you mostly agree but have a slightly different perspective on certain aspects of the topic. Take a similar approach with “I disagree” responses.
• It’s become acceptable to use emojis such as a smiley face or sad face. Emojis can help convey the tone of your statement, but use them sparingly in appropriate contexts (e.g., in an informal chat forum rather than a formal essay).
• Honour any confidentiality of the groups to which you belong. Hold personal information pertaining to others in confidence and think carefully about the personal information you want to share about yourself.

Email

• Review the Student Success Office’s email communications guides (Anatomy of an Email and Email Communication Checklist).
• Start emails to instructors in a more formal manner with “Hello” or “Dear.” If you need to email your instructor or teaching assistant, use your university email address (e.g. jholb12@uwaterloo.ca), not a personal email address (e.g. funky_poodle@gmail.com).
• It's often a good idea to provide some brief context for what you are emailing about, such as, "I'm in your Tue/Thu Stats course. Last Thursday I asked you after class about bivariate distributions. I have a follow-up question..."
• Use a standard and accessible font such as Aptos, Ariel, or Calibri. Avoid “silly” fonts like Comic Sans. As for font size, choose 12 pt. or 14 pt.

Remember: you’re part of a professional learning community. That community can be enhanced by each person’s behaviour; likewise, it can be diminished. Help to enhance it!

Support

If you would like support applying these tips to your own teaching and learning, CTE staff members are here to help. View the CTE Support page to find the most relevant staff member to contact.