Refreshing an existing class

In addition to prepping my new American Government class, I am refreshing my summer Global Studies class. I've taught this class every summer for over a decade, so it is comfy and well worn, like a good pair of slippers.  Still, even the best slippers lose their shape after a while and a good course is no different.


I like to use the Quality Matters Rubric to spruce up my class.  The rubric itself gets refreshed every 3 years, with the last update launched in Summer 2011.  So, I'll go over my class element by element, hopefully getting through a standard a week.  Today, we'll tackle half of Standard 1: The overall design of the course is made clear to the student at the beginning of the course.


In my Learning Moment post, I noted how important it is to have good, clear instructions on how to get started. (Standard 1.1).  Standard 1.2 makes sure the students know why they are taking the class, which I have noted in my Syllabus.  I also explain it orally in my Course Orientation.  


Standard 1.3 asks about Netiquette.  Netiquette explains to the students how you expect students to behave in the online classroom. Ideally, this netiquette language would be in my syllabus, but it's not.  I could have a link to a standard set of netiquette, but I don't.  


I've been pretty fortunate over the years and have had very few incidents of bad student behavior in the online classroom. Of course, the time to manage these issues is long before they happen by having good policies in place. I don't want to be in the position of making up rules as I go along. So, this is definitely one for my to-do list this week.


Does anyone have some netiquette language that they like? Or a link to a good netiquette resource?  Most of the ones I read online seem rather lame or don't get at the nuances of bad behavior that I would want students to consider.  Share your thoughts and resources in the comments area below.

Resources:

Quality Matters Rubric  - If you don't have the QM workbook, I encourage you to print out this handy 1 pager to follow along as I reference various standards in the rubric.  

Stephanie's Global Studies Class -

• go to http://angel.seattlecentral.edu
• Enter the user name guestscccgs
• Enter the password gs
• Look for the Courses nugget and click on the Global Studies link

(note: I put this same info in an earlier post and I could have expected you to go back and find it (assuming you (1) saw it in the first place and (2) remembered where to look). But it only took a moment for me to copy and paste it here and isn't it way more convenient for you to have it here than to hunt for it?  Try to do the same extra steps for your students and make their lives a lot easier)