As new students come into the online environment, especially at graduate level, they have already acquired expectations and habits that may enhance or disrupt the communications process. I suspect most already have a sense of using proper protocols, and guidelines, but may need some prompting and encouraging on creating new communications habits and breaking older ones. To me, there is a certain “maturation process” that goes along with communications, meaning that improving communications effectiveness is an ongoing process. Yet in students that take a few classes with me, I get the impression they just want to adapt to the course expectations and content as best they can rather than take the opportunity to improve. Granted there are students that focus energies on communicating effectively and abide by the communications code, but there are others that just want to concentrate on the content and have less of a regard for process or even feedback. Of course class announcements and the communications rubrics will help manage these situations, but I’m wondering if it’s also practical (and perhaps effective) to include communications assessments in the overall program effectiveness assessments. Many universities have assessments of student progress throughout the program, but should there also be an assessment of “communications maturity” especially at graduate level? I’d be interested in reading some opinions regarding the implementation, monitoring and assessing of communications maturity through the different graduate programs.