For my teaching artifact, I’d like to implement a Slack channel. My main goal with this is to build community in my online classroom, which I hope in turn would foster better group and class-wide discussions.
I have never moderated a Slack group before, though I have used the product in my own personal and professional life. In Slack you can have channels for different purposes. I wouldn’t want to overwhelm the students with channels, but I think I would have a general questions channel, along with channels for each major assignment (short papers and the final paper). I would also have a just-for-fun, getting-to-know-you channel.
I want to avoid implementing Slack as just another thing they have to do. I want them to use it and get something out of it, rather than be forced to do so. For that reason, I’m thinking about setting up semester-long study groups for them to participate in- each group would have a channel. I would want to develop a scaffolded approach to sort of “seed” participation, though- I want to set it up, and encourage it, but not force it? And hope it takes hold and increases from there? That is the part I’m trying to work out how to do. I’d be very happy to see any guidance or tips from someone else who has used Slack in this way!
I don’t have a current version of this to paste here, as there is no extant version of this for my course. However, I can tell you what I have done so far to build community that hasn’t worked/has only worked a bit:
- Have students each post a self-introductory blog post, and then have students start a conversation off those posts by commenting on someone else’s post
- Comment on each other’s blog posts
- Comment on Hypothesis comments for readings
- Breakout rooms
- Shared Google doc annotation
5 replies on “Teaching Artifact”
This is a neat idea! It could be useful to have a general, anonymous, or help(!) channel. And, using tags could help organize info or assignments outside of the channels (in a way that would be less linear)
Hi Jessica,
I’ve found Slack to be SO helpful both in classes I’ve taken and taught! I love it so much because it offers the opportunity for students to get answers from the instructor quickly, share ideas amongst students, and facilitate casual discussion and a feeling of community.
There are also so many ways you can use it — one of my favorite uses of Slack was as a post-Covid student in a graduate teaching course. The students were responsible for one reading and would write a summary of the key points of the reading along with a series of questions. When it was the student reader leader’s turn, they would host a one-hour discussion for that reading in a specific slack channel. Those who attended were able to discuss the readings in general, and the reader leader kept everything on track with well placed questions. Though it was sometimes chaotic, it felt so true to the actual in-class discussions we had been missing. I haven’t applied it to my teaching yet, but I would love to do this for future semesters. It was so fun (maybe my idea of fun wouldn’t be the same as a first year student’s though, lol).
This is so cool! Thank you so much for sharing your experience with Slack. I have been thinking about a new way to communicate with students, and this might be it. In your class, did students use Slack in place of emailing the professor or asking general questions? I have a Q&A section on Blackboard for general questions about the class, but the past few semesters students have barely used it.
I like the idea of a class Slack channel a lot! I encourage my students to start their own Whats App groups etc, but I have not joined any of them. I worry about having yet one other thing to check, but perhaps this is a less formal type of discussion board that might increase engagement.
So, I am a total neophyte regarding Slack. It seems like a good way for students to communicate outside of class given where they are likely not seeing each other in person. I have discovered by accident that my Baruch students tend to set up a group communication system outside of the platform already provided by class, BB and email. I think they do this through Whatsapp so that they can communicate with each other in a direct and simple way outside of our class time. Honeslty I’ve never used and and don’t really know what it is capable of. These kinds of out of class connections can facilitate some group solidarity and familiarity in the absence of in class contact and makes a zoom class feel more like a class.