How to avoid misinterpretations in online discussions

When the students were asked how do they think misinterpretations can be avoided in online discussions a number of students stated that guidelines at the beginning of the course is a useful way to ensure that all students are careful about what they write and to explain the objectives and value of discussions. They stated that:

Justine: … because it is so closely assessed people would be very careful before they would say anything negative about another person, because you are told at the outset not to do that. That you can only critique constructively. A way of avoiding that might be to lay down some of those rules at the outset. To be more specific in suggesting to people why the online environment is important and how it can be used and how to get the most out of it. That might be a way of doing it.

Patricia: I suppose an upfront warning for people just saying “be mindful of people’s sensitivities”, that is always a good idea. Normally that appears in the subject outline. I have certainly seen in this subject and other subjects I have studied, alerting people to written communication and the higher propensity to miscommunication. Be careful of tone and watch your capital letters and things like that. Yes, it’s timely to remind people what the objective of the discussion groups are and not. And also for the lecturer, I think to be seen to be in control of the discussion and not let it run away with personal invectives….You could

perhaps use non-confrontational language and perhaps be a little more explanatory when you are expressing yourself.

Patricia added that brevity of online messages can also be misconstrued. She used an example of students who have English as their second language to demonstrate that it is not necessarily being rude when the messages are short.

Some of the students who posted messages were a little abrupt, but I would put that down to English not being their first language and you need to be mindful of that too

Denise also thought that the brevity of her messages might be misinterpreted. She stated that:

I might give the wrong impression to people and the same in return because you try to be brief. Like you can’t spend, you know, your whole time writing messages on the board… I personally probably just tend to have a bit of a brief message and that may come across the wrong way to another person.

A few students mentioned the lack of body language as a cause of misinterpretations. They stated that:

Jacob: I think most of us are still very much into communicating in a wholeness sense. Where you not only depend on the words, but we depend upon a little bit of knowledge about the person and the body language and see whether they are smiling when they say something, all those sorts of things.

Veronica: I mean I appreciate that text is a little different because you can often read different meanings, because you don’t have the facial cues to sort of lock into. But I think people are a lot more careful with what they write.

A couple of students suggested using emoticons to alleviate such misinterpretations although emoticons were not considered an important social presence behaviour in the quantitative data.

Justine: In the course we were encouraged to use emoticons if we wanted to make it clear to someone that we were joking.

Gail added that in addition to smileys she is also very careful to add a sentence to tone down what she is saying.

… because we are different people from different nationalities and I am from Germany myself, I think I am a bit more careful what I say because you might think it is funny but other people don’t find it funny at all. But I have used smileys, but I would say it was meant to be a joke and I would put that in. I would just put

an introductory sentence like you know “I don’t want to step on anyone toes, but maybe this is a stupid question, but I really don’t know, can anyone help” and I think people get the idea when you try.

Felicity provided an example of how she is very cautious when writing a message that may be misinterpreted. She explained that it took her ten minutes to write a two sentence response because she was trying to remain tactful.

I went to put a contribution to the lady who was basically demanding that we have a practice exam to read through and I took about 10 minutes to write my reply even though it was only 2 lines long because I was really conscious of how I was coming across, like I was basically telling her to snap out of it and come into the real world. You don’t get spoon fed, this is Uni, kind of thing. But I didn’t want to come across like that.

She continued by explaining that the contribution that followed hers was what she might have said had she not been so cautious and described how it resulted in an argument.

This other guy has written after me and started a big argument. He actually wrote what I would have probably written if I hadn’t been trying to make sure I would not come across rudely. And what he might have been saying may have been just been completely taken out of context because he just wrote and maybe didn’t re- read it or whatever. And I think the text nature of it is so open to other people’s

interpretations … because all you have to rely on is what you are reading. You don’t have whether the person is smiling at you, looking at you or got their arms crossed or whatever.

Felicity went on to say that she waits a day or so before she responds to a message that has upset her.

...when I read that lady’s message it made me really mad and I actually didn’t reply straight away. I went on the next day and replied to her and then like I didn’t go back because I thought if she had written something smart back to me I wasn’t in a mood to deal with that for a couple of days and then when I went back to read the replies I was in a really good mood and I actually thought the whole thing was completely hilarious. Whereas, if I had gone in a couple of days before … if I had read it prior to the exam and been a bit stressed and she had written some sort of sarcastic or nasty reply to me, I would have taken the whole conversation completely differently.

Gail also waited till the next day to reply to a message, she stated that:

If you are not in the right mood I don’t answer an email or just don’t post it. I wait for the next day when I have thought about it. I think that is commonsense and yes, I would say that is pretty stupid you know, students should be mature enough to deal with each other normally. I mean I don’t know if it is true or not, I haven’t

done any research on it, but I would say that people with a very short temper probably blow up in a study group quicker than other people because they don’t think about their actions, they just act.

To summarise, students thought that brevity and lack of body language caused misinterpretations. Students suggested guidelines at the beginning of the course, use of emoticons, being careful and thoughtful about what they wrote and waiting before responding all helped to minimise such misinterpretations.