How can Slack benefit your institution?

In a fast-growing technological society, Slack is a great option for educational institutions. It has benefits for both the educators and their students.

Slack offers an unlimited amount of what are called "channels" and users that can access them to engage in learning. Channels are where instructors can share, post and comment about assignments and their due dates. It also allows them to upload links to videos, slideshows, and other medias of importance.

They are also able to create polls which help encourage conversation and keep students engaged in the material that is being taught by the educator. These polls can offer quick and easy feedback to see what students may need help on or it could be used for fun ways of getting to know the students and teacher.

Slack allows for easy and accessible integration with learning management systems that we also offer such as Canvas.

Along with creating channels, they can also create threads which are a list of comments from one initial message. They provide a better focus for what questions students have that need clarification. When someone has a private concern or would like to communicate with a certain person or group, direct messaging is also available. This is great for group projects and collaborations.

As a new feature, Slacks users are now able to send and share a three-minute video or voice recording for those ideas that are just not able to get across the same through a typed message.

Most importantly, this platform gives educators and their students a faster and more efficient way to communicate, and it creates a digital classroom community. Let us help you become dynamic by using Slack.

What are Slack's disadvantages?

While Slack can provide a multitude of benefits, we must also inform you of its potential disadvantages.

Communication between instructors and their students play a key role in their educational success and although Slack can help foster that communication better, one drawback might be how it typically involves less formal language. Each educator is different and therefore the messaging informality of this platform might not be for those who are not comfortable with that type of communication.

When it comes to deciding what systems and platforms to use for teaching, instructors must take into account that some students might choose to opt-out of them. If students opt-out of using slack, they are not going to be able to obtain the information shared on the platform or have that easy access to reach their instructors or peers.

Having multiple channels can keep students and educators organized, but unfortunately this could also become overwhelming for some. Notifications from different channels can be a bit confusing to navigate through them when there are several replies.

Our hope is that these disadvantages will not be a deal breaker for your institution to become more involved in the education of your students by using Slack.

How does Slack meet the demands of different educational institutions?

Each institution has its own set of goals and ideas they would like to reach throughout their school years. We strongly believe in providing the richest media possible and have it easily accessible for those purposes. Because we want what is best for you, Slack has learned to adapt and change to benefit its users. The media richness theory created by Daft and Lengel defines face-to-face interaction as the highest level of media richness (Daft & Lengel, 1983). However, synchronous media also is included into that high level since it provides immediate feedback and visual cues are available. That is why Slack not only offers instant messaging and being able to share other media, but was able to integrate the creation of video, voice memos and live phone calls all within the same application. Meeting your needs is what Slack and Learning Technologies are all about.