Be sure to let your students know how communications will be handled in your course. Consider questions such as:

• How will you contact students?
• How and when may students contact you?
• Can they call you? When and what number?
• What address should students used to email you?
• Will you hold office hours? By phone? Using chat? Email only?
• What is the expected timeframe for you to respond?

Be sure to set expectations for how group communications will be handled in your course. Consider questions such as:

• Can students send group emails to the class?
• Is interaction required or optional?
• How many times each week they must post original comments?
• How many times they must post responses to others' comments?
• What the quality of the comments must be?
• How the comments will be evaluated?
• What grade they can expect for various levels of performance?
• Are students aware of copyright issues and online etiquette when posting to discussion forums?

Communications Etiquette

When people communicate in-person they use tone of voice, hand gestures and body language in addition to their words. When communicating online, you cannot rely on those additional methods. There are generally accepted methods of behavior for online communication. Although not evaluated, expectations of student conduct online should be clearly stated:

• rules of conduct for participating in the discussion board
• rules of conduct for email content
• speaking style requirements, (i.e. use of correct English required as opposed to net acronyms)
• spelling and grammar expectations, if any

It's important to outline your online communication guidelines to students. Determine what behaviors are or are not acceptable in your online discussions. Spell these out to your students in the syllabus or in a class orientation section. To minimize unacceptable behavior, it is a good practice to have students read and acknowledge that they understand the expectations.

For examples see websites such as:
http://www.albion.com/netiquette/
http://gemstate.net/gemstate/netiquette.htm
http://www.onlinenetiquette.com/courtesy1.html
http://www.aarp.org/learntech/computers/life_online/online_etiquette.html

Here's an online netiquette quiz:
http://www.bucks.edu/online/dlresources/etiquette.htm