Send this message to the e-community of protégés and mentors.
Subject: Guidelines for protégés
Here are a few guidelines to follow as you participate in our online mentoring community.
- Log on to your email account [or into the electronic forum] at least once each week, and read and respond to messages.
- Regularly communicate with mentors and other participants.
- Notify me of any changes to your email address or other personal information.
- Keep paragraphs in your messages short, and separate paragraphs with blank spaces.
- Avoid covering several topics in one message. It's better to send several messages so that recipients can respond to each topic separately.
- Use mixed upper and lower case letters, and capitalize letters in a word for emphasis. Using all capital letters is like SHOUTING.
- It's friendly to begin a message with the name of the person to whom you are corresponding and to end the message with your name.
- Do not use words others might find offensive. Avoid personal attacks. Don't engage in name-calling.
- Do not participate in conversations that would be unacceptable to your parents and/or program staff.
- Do not engage in conversations that you are not comfortable with. Immediately report offensive or troubling messages that you receive to me and a parent or guardian.
- Remember that electronic correspondence is easy for recipients to forward to others and, therefore, is not appropriate for very personal messages. Email is more like a postcard than a sealed letter.
- Spell check and carefully review a message BEFORE you send it.
[name of e-mentoring administrator]