Teaching with Slack: The usefulness of Slack as an instructional and conversational tool in college courses
This is a dialogue-driven course. It is imperative you come to each class prepared to engage in meaningful discussion with your colleagues. It is also important you commit to participating in our online community via Slack. My intention is not to require a virtual discussion component that is “fake” and something to simply check off your list. My desire is to build a dialogical, problem-posing community where we ask questions, seek answers, give insight, embrace vulnerability, and grow as learners together. As we only meet once per week, the virtual component via Slack provides us with an opportunity to continue our conversation even after our face to face time on Mondays.
The statement above pulled from my course syllabus outlined my intentions for the participation component of TED 3385 (a social studies methods course for 3rd-year undergraduate students). As a social studies teacher, dialogue (ideally) forms the essence of my course sessions. After co-teaching this methods course while completing my MSEd in social studies education, I became the sole instructor in the Fall 2020 semester during the first year of my PhD. Although course sessions generally lasted a solid 2.5 hours, meeting once per week created intellectual divisions between one session and the next. With the added uncertainty of face-to-face meetings due to COVID, my hope was that a virtual/digital discussion avenue via Slack would contribute to a seamless continuation of these conversations in an fully online format.
In preparation for the course, I read a number of articles detailing instructors’ experiences with using Slack in the classroom. I also joined a Remote Academia Slack workspace which proved to be an invaluable space for asking questions and acquiring resources/digital instructional strategies (See the end of this post for these links). For instructors looking for ways to encourage dialogue and streamline course communication, the following provides a brief overview of the various ways I implemented Slack within this semester-long SS methods course.
Slack for Discussion
Slack truly shined when used as a way to foster dialogue and conversation for a number of reasons.
It’s intuitive. Slack works and feels much like any other messaging app. Message alerts push right to a user’s phone or desktop. For replies requiring a simply acknowledgement, Slack encourages emoji reactions (😊, 👏, 👍, 💯, 👀). Further, Slack makes it easy to mute notifications for certain times of the day.
It’s all about threads. While posting a response within a specific channel alerts all individuals “subscribed” to that channel, Slack allows users to reply to a post “in-thread” thus alerting only the individual who submitted the initial post. For larger classes, this feature proves priceless as students are not bombarded with unnecessary or unwanted notifications.
It’s low-stakes. The impetus for utilizing Slack to house our class discussions mainly stemmed from desiring to encourage students to share stream-of-consciousness thought. Although at times I encouraged students to put time and effort into their responses, I vied for heightened participation rather than the extensive preparation framing traditional discussion post assignments. In my experience, these conventional “discussion board” prerequisites leads to procrastination or a lack of engagement or interest in the task.
It’s simple and flexible. Beyond the weekly discussion responses (students were asked to post their initial responses to the discussion prompt early in the week, then respond/react to and interact with their peers’ posts by the next class), I also asked my students to participate in an introduction/ice breaker activity at the beginning of the semester. After the first class meeting, I instructed students to record and post a three minute video introducing themselves to the class (plus, with having to wear masks during our face to face time, this was a chance to see everyone’s faces 😊). The video concluded with a two-truths-and-a-lie game and where the rest of the class guessed the truth. Slack makes attaching videos (or other files) simple and quick.
Slack for Class Communication
Along with serving as the discussion component of my course, Slack replaced both emails and the announcement/message feature of my university’s LMS (Canvas) as the sole form of instructor-student, student-instructor, and student-student medium for communication. Here’s how I used it.
Announcements. I posted all important course announcements in the #announcement channel. Students received these messages as push notifications on their phones. They could also respond with a question/comment and react with an emoji to show they saw the message.
General inquiries/resources. rather than receiving students’ questions via email, where in most cases the answers to their individual questions assisted other students as well, I encouraged students to pose confusions and clarifications within the #general channel. This channel also served as a resource repository, where, after every class, I would post/link to relevant resources and materials from our session.
Booking office hours. While not frequently used, the #office-hours channel served as a way to book a virtual meeting with me during my office hours. An interested student would post a proposed time slot in the channel (so other students could see my availability). I would then confirm or offer a different time and then send the student a Zoom link via DM.
Random. Within the #random channel, I and my students could post interesting articles/ideas related to the course content, memes describing one’s present emotional state, or words of encouragement.
DMs and Feedback. I used the direct message (DM) feature of Slack for specific, personalized feedback on individual assignments. Students used DMs for inquiries not relevant to other students (e.g. absences). While DMs are private conversations, I stressed students should not share sensitive or confidential information.
