Code of Online Professional Conduct

Commitment to ethical and professional conduct is expected of every participant in a BVU online course. Behavior expectations for the online environment are outlined below. Before beginning an online training, participants must agree to abide by these guidelines.

NETIQUETTE

• Participants will act in a professional, responsible, ethical and legal manner, in accordance with the school, district and state policies, and in compliance with state and national laws.

• Participants will conduct themselves in a manner that facilitates learning in the online environment.

• Participants will use standard English including proper punctuation, spelling and grammar in emails, threaded discussion postings and assignments.

ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

• Participants may not write, use, send, download or display deliberately hostile and insulting (inflammatory), obscene, threatening, harassing or otherwise offensive messages, postings, pictures, or other forms of communication. This includes written communications, emails and telephone calls with facilitators and BVU staff before, during or after a course.

• Participants may not discuss private issues about the training via the threaded discussions and other communication tools. If participants have issues and/or concerns about the course content, amount of work, grades given, etc. they shall contact the online facilitator directly and privately.

• Participants may not post negative comments such as the amount of time spent on assignments on threaded discussions. This invites others to join in and complain which is not a professional use of class discussions. Feedback is welcome and should be submitted to the facilitator.

PARTICIPANT EXPECTATIONS

• Participants are responsible for their own learning. If a participant is unable to login, receive emails, access lessons and/or complete assignments, contact the facilitator.

• Participants will actively participate and complete all assigned work according to the course timeline and facilitator instructions.

• Participants will access the course weekly in order to respond and participate in the discussion threads and complete assignments.

• Participants who are inactive in the course or fall one week behind in completing assignments will be administratively withdrawn.

• Participants who wish to withdraw from a course must do so by notifying the facilitator in a timely manner.

ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT

Participants may not engage in plagiarism, knowingly representing the words, data or ideas of another as one’s own, in any exercise. Submitting all or part of another’s work as one’s own in an academic exercise including unauthorized collaboration with other participants is not allowed. Sharing any submitted work with another participant at any time before, during or after a course is not acceptable and could result in the loss of inservice points if points have already been awarded to the participant.

In an effort to maintain system integrity and to ensure responsible use, files and communications through Blackboard are monitored and recorded. Under no circumstances should online participants expect that messages or discussion postings that are created, modified, transmitted, received or stored on Broward Virtual University servers are private. Online participants who violate any of the above conditions will be denied access.

If you do not submit your weekly assignment(s) by the end of each week, you will be removed from the course.

If you do not post in the Discussion Forum for one week, you will be removed from the course.

Please Note: All violators of the Code of Online Professional Conduct will be reported to their school and district administration.

A week in a course runs from Monday to Sunday. Each week’s work needs to be completed before the end of the following week. Each week’s work must be submitted by Sunday at 8:00 pm. Timelines posted by the facilitator in the announcement area must be followed.

Example: All of the work from week 2 is due by the last day of week 3. Timelines posted in the announcement area must be followed.

RESOURCES

• Code of Online Professional Conduct