Post 316: Should I use emoticons in my forum posts or my announcements in an online classroom?

Should I use emoticons in my forum posts or my announcements in my online classroom?

What is an emoticon?

An emoticon is short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a person's feelings or mood, or as a time-saving method.  

Many online teachers use emoticons to replace body gestures or facial expressions of approval, dislike or understanding. Emoticons tell students in textual format what the writer is feeling. Some teachers feel emoticons add personality to a drab online classroom that is too textually based.

I recommend using emotions only if it fits your subject matter, your teaching persona or your school policy. Some online schools may feel that using emoticons does not reflect a professional image of the school or the teacher. Ask your boss first if it is okay to use emoticons in their online classroom to be on the safe side.

I use emoticons rarely in my online classroom. If for example, I have an exciting announcement, or I want to invite students to a live session, then I may use an emoticon to suggest how exciting my online workshop will be or if I approve or am proud of how well my students are doing in the class.

Rather than using emoticons, I tend to use the more sedate class badges which looks more like reward badges that for me, seem more professional, yet still denote expressions of excitement and emotion, but it is up to you, to use either a class badge, or an emoticon to decorate your class messages.

For instance, for online group projects or for students who have given great peer reviews, I could give that student or group of students a 'collaborator' badge for good teamwork.  Just like my face to face elementary students loved my golden star badges for good behavior, my online students love class badges to motivate learning.

I like to use class badges for my online classes, and for me personally, I love to use emoticons in my Facebook personal newsfeed to express approval, disgust, happiness or sadness over a meme somebody has posted.