Use Emojis to strengthen communication in distance learning

Is it okay to use emojis when commenting on student work in distance learning? Although I have not seen any scientific study on this, I am sure that the teaching profession would be divided in this matter. Personally, I think these small symbols are a great way to strengthen communication and I use them extensively. Often we give feedback to students with different tones of voice in the classroom. Sometimes with a joke and sometimes more serious. 

When all the feedback is received as black, written words and there might be a lot of them to read, there is a risk that the students lose motivation. It is easier to reach out to the students and show your personal presence by marking the tone and expression with symbols. In addition, emojis are international and understood by everyone.I always use Emojipedia to find suitable images for Google Docs, I usually use: https://emojipedia.org/google to be sure it will be the same emoji in the comment as the one I had in mind. I simply select an emoji and press ctrl+c to copy and ctrl+v to paste, but you can also click on the emoji and select "copy" and then paste it into your comment in Google Docs.

I can imagine that there are colleagues who think it looks too informal and childish, but at the same time I think that the most important thing must be that communication works well, that it is fulfilling to take part of the feedback to make sure that the students do not lose motivation. In order to achieve that you may have to sacrifice your pride and spread some happy emojis around you.

Maria Rådstam

ICT-teacher

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