Conduct and content online pre-induction

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Introduction

When working in shared online spaces, it is important that you:

treat others with courtesy and respect
safeguard confidentiality and personal security
avoid committing or supporting plagiarism
understand and respect copyright.

Communicating online

Courtesy and confidentiality

Treat others with the same courtesy and respect as you would in a face-to-face conversation. This is an academic community and you should feel free to be controversial and outspoken with your ideas but never offensive or hurtful.
Don’t write or share anything that is:
- defamatory, obscene, discriminatory, illegal, incites hatred or could damage the reputation of the University
- confidential or infringes another person’s privacy; for example, you should not post someone’s contact details without their permission
- sent to you privately and not intended to be shared with others
- likely to make someone feel bullied or harassed
- malicious or potentially harmful to others.
Don’t engage in commercial activity.
Although it seldom happens, moderators can and will remove content that they decide is unsuitable.

Messages

Be brief. Several short posts have more impact than one long message. Write in a natural and informal style but take a moment to check grammar and spelling. Use the spellchecker.

Online messages are sometimes misunderstood because the other person’s facial expression can’t be seen. It can help to use emoticons to show you are smiling, surprised, sad, embarrassed and so on.

When you reply to a message you can set the scene by quoting part of the original message. Make it easy for readers to see what you have done by putting quoted text between double angle brackets, << and >>.

If you quote from an external source always credit the original author as you would in other academic writing.

It’s fine to use standard abbreviations but do not write whole messages using the abbreviations used in texting.

Don’t write in capital letters because it can look as though you are SHOUTING and is harder to read.

Prevent (counter-terrorism) strategy

The Open University has a statutory duty to show ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’ (Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, 2015).

If the use of the University’s computing equipment, systems or information causes concern that a person may be at risk of being drawn into terrorism, the University may take action in accordance with the OU Prevent strategy.

If you are concerned that a fellow student is in danger of being radicalised, you can contact the Student Casework team for confidential advice.

Issues concerning discussion forums

If at any time you feel that the code of conduct has been breached you should first contact the moderator of the discussion area concerned and ask them to address the problem.

All moderators should be familiar with the procedure for dealing with complaints.

If you have created a forum, wiki or blog as part of the shared activities module, then you are responsible for all the content and will need to moderate accordingly. If you feel a contributor has breached the computing code of conduct, then take a copy of the text for future reference and delete the offending text from your activity. You should send a personal message to the contributor explaining your reasons for deleting their contribution. If you experience a persistent breach of the code from a particular contributor or you feel the matter is of a serious nature then contact the complaints and appeals office (Complaints-Appeals@open.ac.uk) for support and advice.