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Netiquette rules in online learning through the lens of digital citizenship scale in the post-corona era

Tahani Al-Khatib (Department of Computer Information Systems, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan)

Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society

ISSN: 1477-996X

Article publication date: 3 March 2023

Issue publication date: 10 April 2023

761

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the trending term: “Netiquette” as an important element in the effective digital citizenship. The research suggests a systematic framework of netiquette rules in the field of online education based on the classical core rules of netiquette and according to the digital citizenship scale (DCS). The research also studies the corresponding responsibilities of both educators and students to raise awareness towards using technology in a balanced, safe, smart and ethical way as the shift towards the digital activities increased significantly in the post-corona time.

Design/methodology/approach

The research used the qualitative data that were based on the everyday observation and analysis of the online education experience at the university of Jordan in the academic year 2020/2021; the online group discussions of students and teachers; and investigating the guidelines of the online learning netiquette rules in various academic institutes. Comparative analysis was conducted to merge and eliminate redundant rules and to add sub rules, and then to cluster them into groups. The suggested clustered groups were distributed into the classical core rules outline of netiquette. In each core rule, the sub rules were reclassified and recategorized according to the DCS by studying the complexity levels and their corresponding factors. The suggested framework updates and adds DCS levels and factors considering the exceptional experience of online education through the pandemic.

Findings

The research finds that “Netiquette” had been neglected in cyber ethics literature, and so it has to be rediscovered through the lens of digital citizenship that becomes very noticeable issue in the post-COVID era. So, the research presents a systematic framework that outlines more than 150 netiquette sub rules in the field of online education, and that were clustered according to DCS and the classical core rules of netiquette. It also adds a new factor to the bottom level of DCS which is the primarily skills and traits, and also updates the internet and political activism fac-tor by adding the social perspective.

Originality/value

A novel classification of the classical core rules of netiquette was proposed in the field of online education to serve as a spectrum of identifying the complexity of digital citizenship levels and factors. This research can be a starting point of more works on netiquette research in online education and on other fields such as online business meetings, social media networking and online gaming.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the Department of computer Information Systems in the University of Jordan for their support and cooperation in providing me with the necessary resources to complete my research during the process of conducting interviews for this study.

Conflicts of interest: The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.

Citation

Al-Khatib, T. (2023), "Netiquette rules in online learning through the lens of digital citizenship scale in the post-corona era", Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, Vol. 21 No. 2, pp. 181-201. https://doi.org/10.1108/JICES-08-2021-0089

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited

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