Notes on netiquette for teamwork

I am teaching a problem-based learning course at the moment which involves the students working as a multi-disciplinary team to address a specific task. My role in the role play scenario is as a critical friend.

As well as being multi-disciplinary, the students have very different prior experience, so helping them create an effective team dynamic has been really interesting. As critical friend, I am on all their group chats, but I don't intervene directly

At the end of last week, some tensions bubbled up in the group chat and as so often, the triggering cause was not the underlying cause. That was a lack of clarity, leading to misunderstandings, of what I like to think of as 'messaging hygiene'.

The trigger was one member of the group posting something on a topic the group as a whole regarded as closed (and needed to move on from in order to finish the task on time). But that was posted to a channel called 'Resources'. Unfortunately the channel didn't have a clear purpose defined in its description, so this was taken as inviting further discussion.

So here are my messaging hygiene tips:

1. Think about work-life balance when choosing a messaging system. For example, never use WhatsApp: apart from the fact that it means sharing phone numbers, most team members will be using it for personal communication as well, and thus not be able to simply turn off notifications entirely for that app on evenings and weekends.

2. Have some channels which are about posts for information or future reference, making clear that the poster is not inviting discussion. This enables two things:
   2.1 Irrelevant or 'rabbithole' posts can be politely ignored by the rest of the team. No one needs to explain or justify not responding.¹
   2.2 No one needs to have notifications enabled for that channel (though they might keep notifications for mentions).

3. Don't have a 'General' channel. Instead have a 'For discussion' channel and an 'Off topic' channel. Team members will probably want notifications for all posts to the former but not the latter.

4. Add topic specific discussion channels such as 'Meeting planning' so that these - often time-sensitive - discussions don't get lost

5. Make sure everyone knows how to manage their notifications on a per channel basis and that they understand mentions and keywords.