Handling flaming
Is important for all online instructors to understand what flaming is and how to handle this within the online classroom. Flaming is a hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users, often involving the use of profanity.
Vince and Elaina,
Personal experience is the best thing to share in these forums. Thanks so much.
Elaina,
I have encountered this myself. I had 1 student confront another student that had cheated off of him in the forum, and by the time that I had seen what happened, the discussion board was full of cuss words and threats. Therefore, I had to handle that immediately before it got worse. Fortunately, that has only happened once in 5 years of working for 7 different online schools.
Sincerely,
Vince
Ed,
Great! Sounds like you're on top of things and doing things early in the class. Thanks so much!
we cover these topics day one during introductions. It is made clear that trolling, flaming, and stump the chump (when the learner tries to find a minute detail they think the instructor may not know to make them look like they more than the instructor)are all class poisoning devices that will get a student removed from the classroom. It is better to give one troublemaker their money back than to have several students unhappy and the environment poisoned.
Michael,
Excellent input. We all have to be on the look out for various types of students. Thanks!
Another online communication term instructors should understand is "trolling." Trolling refers to situations where a student responds to others (students or instructors) in a manner that would encourage flaming as a response. These "trolls" want to make others react emotionally and lose control of their professionalism.
Most often, trolling is quite obvious; in these situations, dealing with it directly in the public communication is likely necessary (to hopefully prevent others from responding negatively) in addition to private discussions with the "trolling" student. Be aware, however, that some people will make minimally combative comments frequently to avoid obvious attention. Thus, carefully monitoring discussions for trends of this sort is essential.
~Michael
Todd,
Glad to see that you have thought through the "process" of handling this. You have learned from your experience, obviously. Thanks for sharing that with us.
I would say yes, it is extremely important to understand this term, recognizing it and being able to manage the situation is important. In 8 years of teaching online I have never heard of this term. I have seen some very heated student interactions and had students insulting me as a facilitator. This is an interesting topic, because I believe this happens more times than we think. The process that I have always done is give a warning to students first, in addition to contacting my supervisor and ccing email conversations. I believe there needs to be more training on this type of situation or a refresher
Elaina ,
Another new term to many people. Thanks for bringing that into the conversation.
