How Slack Facilitates Communication and Collaboration in Seminars and Project-Based Courses

Abstract

Lectures and seminars increasingly strive for continuous interactions between learners and the instructor. I study whether the communication program Slack contributes to these goals by analyzing daily activity statistics in methodological and project-based postgraduate courses at an Irish university. Both semester-long courses were taught online during the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) and in person. The quantitative analysis reveals three insights. First, students are active on Slack throughout the term. Second, students post messages in public channels and extensively use private channels and direct messages. Third, many students follow the conversations, ensuring transparent and fair communication between students and instructors. Open-ended responses suggest that Slack created “team spirit.” I conclude with five recommendations: students should sign up in the first week of term; create channels for different aspects of the module; explain when students can expect a response; encourage private conversations between students; and monitor activities regularly.

Ten simple rules for teaching an introduction to R

“…Leverage tools like Slack or Zoom chat to boost communication and peer collaboration. These platforms enable learners to ask questions, seek clarifications, and learn from peers’ conversation threads in a way that can feel more familiar [ 16 ]. Asynchronous communication on platforms like Slack can complement the live sessions and accommodate different learning styles.…”

Networking With Industry Partners, Experiential Learning, and Teamwork: Engaging and Preparing Students Across Modalities

“…Social networking sites like Facebook or WhatsApp have facilitated interactions and stimulated student engagement (Sobaih et al, 2021). Slack effectively elicits frequent student-to-student and student-to-instructor collaboration and team spirit across modalities (Müller, 2023). However, robust campus support at SUNY Oneonta, easy integration with the LMS, and privacy were weighted heavily (U.S. Department of Education, 2021; Schlosser et al, 2022;Siddiqui et al, 2022), which tipped the scale toward using Microsoft Teams over other options.…”

“…goals the prior week, and it was difficult to differentiate stalling from issues with technology. To encourage students to use Microsoft Teams, it would be wise to introduce it during the first days of the course and Portway to use it almost daily for communications with students (Müller, 2023), and this is something I intend to do the next time I teach this course in either modality.…”

Ten simple rules for teaching an introduction to R

“…Leverage tools like Slack or Zoom chat to boost communication and peer collaboration. These platforms enable learners to ask questions, seek clarifications, and learn from peers' conversation threads in a way that can feel more familiar [15]. Asynchronous communication on platforms like Slack can complement the live sessions and accommodate different learning styles.…”