Channels and Platforms

3.1 Channels/Platforms

Creating a community requires spaces for members to gather, meet, and communicate, whether physical or digital. Members need unstructured places to create and organize themselves. In HPL, Slack channels created by individual members represent these places. These function as lower-pressure social environments where members can get conversations started, form groups based on affinities, and reach out to other students. "Communities outside HPL" tied for first place in student data on what pieces of the course were "very important for community," - the primary offerings that existed at the time were a WhatsApp thread and robust Slack workspace.

In a course community like this, there is also a requirement for academically focused spaces where members can discuss course topics. We will talk about the tool Harmonize that HPL is pioneering this year. We already talked about some of the pedagogical implications of discussion boards in a constructivist community in the section on Content. However, here we will talk in greater detail about the specific use of the tool.

Slack

One functional issue for the Slack workspace is how it relates to other Slack workspaces that have been created. Each year at HGSE may now have a different digital landscape or organization according to how students have designed their communications. For ‘21-’22, each program has reportedly created its own Slack workspace. These student-created Slacks forms of community have a sense of privacy and exclusiveness, which encourages more natural interaction and less self-consciousness or self-censorship.

However, these program-centric Slacks also split the M.Ed program into four chunks, making it less likely that they will interact on a program-wide basis. In light of this segmentation, the HPL Slack workspace may be the most central location for the 2021 HGSE cohort to communicate with one another, increasing its value immensely. It will also likely be a place to seek support from the course team. Slack's centrality is good news because Slack seems to be a good tool for this type of interaction at scale, as evidenced by the centrality of the HGSE ‘20-’21 group over the previous year. Additionally, CCF has said that "platforms with existing user behavior such as FB, Whatsapp, Slack or LinkedIn, tend to create more active and lively groups.”

Lifetime

As mentioned in the earlier section on member exit experience, HPL should make a decision regarding the lifetime of the Slack community. Will it remain an HPL slack, or become a general HGSE Slack? After associating together for six-seven weeks or more, creating affinity groups, and sharing a ton of data and information, members will have built up a relatively bonded community that would likely be disruptive to get rid of completely. In 2021, because Slack communities are so far (allegedly) separated by program, the HPL Slack may actually be the most central form of community for students across programs. Therefore it is important to have a contingency plan for how this community will endure and its data be stored. If students know that the Slack will or won't be around, they will be able to plan accordingly. Here it is recommended that HPL retain its Slack account and allow any communities formed on their to continue for the remainder of the year.

Tool Fatigue/Learning Curve

Interacting across many platforms can affect a wearying effect on a community. One commonly reported experience from HGSE alumni in 2020 was “tool fatigue,” the heavy cognitive load of attempting to uncover the different organizations of different courses across all their various tools.

“I wish there was a concept of “less is more” when designing learning experiences.”

“It took a while just to adjust to all these different places where information was coming from, but I feel like finally, within a month or so, I was in the right Slack channels and was getting the right information in emails.”

One learning curve for incoming members is to understand from which places communication will be coming. For this reason, we suggest that HPL concentrate on onboarding students to Slack first as the primary hub for the community and introduce other tools such as Harmonize and Perusall a week or two later, so there is no confusion between the platforms and students can understand them as the academic platforms of the course. Students should be onboarded as quickly as possible to Slack to begin to organize themselves and bond.

HPL will also need to decide on an onboarding protocol for Slack. Past onboarding protocol included a brief welcome message to students with an invitation to say a bit about themselves in the general channel (these replies might then beget offshoot conversations in the nested thread beneath the reply.). This message would also be an excellent place to include guidelines for civil discussion and respectful engagement with Slack.

Member Experience in Discussion Boards

In discussion board posts in the previous year, students expressed frustration with the discussion tool known as YellowDig. Student feedback panning the tool ranged from UI/UX challenges to the feeling that the prompts felt forced and inauthentic, particularly since YellowDig awards points to users' responses and that metric (obtaining a certain number of points) was set as a course requirement.

In 2021, it will be interesting to learn the extent to which replacing YellowDig improves student experience in discussion boards. Harmonize does not offer a point system, so students will not be concerned with that. The tool also pulls a user's Canvas profile picture, so students will have a chance to put a name to a classmate's face and ideas when they respond to their posts. However, they may still be concerned with UX/UI challenges and the feelings of disconnect that can accompany discussion prompts. In order to keep discussions clean and easy to follow, Harmonize splits students' posts into discrete threads, which can be visited by clicking on the thumbnail that includes their picture and the post title. This "nested" feature may also improve students' ability to engage in new and meaningful conversations if encouraged by the teaching team. It will also make the titles significant for expressing what the post contains, which users should be familiarized with in discussions on the user interface.

A question that will still bear relevance is what scales and topics work best to create great discussion prompts to engage community on Harmonize. Introductions that involve a relatively high amount of thoughtful reflection may belong in groups that will socially endure over the course of the semester, such as TF cohorts. On the other hand, large-scale areas may be suitable for offering brief reflections on individual experiences related to course content to increase the degree of "cross-pollination" in the course. Also, as we mentioned before, pedagogical research on communities of practice suggests that instruction should be fluid and organic as the discussion evolves. HPL will want to prefer prompts that increase peoples' experiences in creating a sense of shared meaning.

"Meaningfulness," in the sense that psychologist Roy Baumeister, coined is an increased understanding of the future as indicated by someone's experience of the past and present. By reflecting on their learning histories and experiences as they learn, students can embody the course's learning goals of developing professional identity. An alternative Harmonize discussion space, for instance, could be used to give students to tell relevant stories about their experience as it relates to course content. At the very least, discussion posts should be written carefully to optimize the experience of "meaningfulness" for students in the community of practice. Opportunities of this type will likely increase engagement, because people are interested in each other's work and want a chance to introduce their own work or ideas to the community.

Citations:

Community Canvas, The. (2020). The Community Canvas Framework. Retrieved from https://community-canvas.org/