Ever heard the saying “the camera adds 10 pounds”? Or that alcohol intensifies your personality? It’s true of the online environment too: whatever you do, however you seem, it’s magnified online.
When you’re curt or impatient in an email, it comes off twice as curt and impatient as it would in a written memo. When you object to someone’s point of view in a post, it comes off twice as harsh. Irritated can be seen as angry. A casual remark can seem inappropriately off-hand. And when you’re being friendly, it can come across as very friendly, sometimes even loving, especially if the message is a lengthy one.
Email, they say, is for old people. That’s because the younger set often communicate in small bites, bits of info through txt messages or Facebook chat. They might not say who they are, start with “hello”, sign the email, etc. They aren’t trying to be rude, they just have trouble sometimes changing the communication style based on the format. But instructors can model by being quick and casual in IM or txt, and more formal through email. Discussion boards, depending on the assignment and parameters, may fall somewhere in between. The shorter the message, however, the more likely that unseemly magnification could occur.
This is important to remember in teaching online, and it’s one of the reasons that carefully crafting an online personality is so important. If I want my students to see me as professional, and I write pages or posts like I would write professionally, it will come across as stiff and stuffy. If I want to be approachable, I must be careful I don’t seem so nice that students think I’ll be there for them at 2 a.m.
