Slack in the Classroom

Slack provides a reliable, easy-to-use, platform-agnostic chat and instant messaging service that faculty and students have many locations, including Luddy, have readily adopted. The articles below examine the different ways faculty have repurposed Slack to meet their pedagogical and administrative needs. Examples include using Slack as an email replacement; as well as for academic and social discussions; increasing engagement; interviews with experts, polling; and file storage. They also detail how well features such as external app integration with YouTube, Microsoft OneDrive and Azure work for them in Slack. Additionally, they explain how students can use Slack for group work, crowdsourcing notes, and creating resource repositories.

Evan Peck, Bucknell HCI discusses how he used Slack across 5 different courses in his department’s Computer Science curriculum. https://medium.com/bucknell-hci/how-i-use-slack-in-my-courses-a-3-year-reflection-888c7e742d04 A summary of the tips he shared in this article include:

• If you use Slack, throw away course email and commit to it. (Please note: Sameer Patil provided me with this information in regards to using Slack for email (thanks Sameer!):

In terms of using it for official IU purposes (especially teaching, which has FERPA implications), please note Slack is not currently an IU enterprise system.

UITS informs me that “Slack is subject to all other policies like data management, SSSP, IT-28, acceptable use agreement, etc. If someone wants to use Slack, they should fill out the SSSP and describe how they will use it, what kind of data, and audience, and then the data stewards, purchasing, and security and privacy offices will vet the request.”​

My apologies for the confusion.

• Slack can be used to increase engagement and interactivity amongst your students. Feel free to contact me for clarification on how to keep those activities FERPA compliant.

• Don’t create too many channels for critical information (homework)

• Leverage the creation of new channels for non-critical information (interesting articles, etc.)

• Use Slack outside class to create assignments that involve an interactive component between students (it’s what Slack is good at!).

• Use Slack during class as a low-barrier mechanism to share information (both from you to students as well as from the students to you).

• In project-based classes, Slack will help facilitate behind-the-scenes communication between groups.

• Posting metrics can provide additional feedback about assignments.

• Use Slack as a way to make learning more playful

Phil Simon, a lecturer at Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business, and author of Slack for Dummies https://www.philsimon.com/blog/trends/use-slack-inside-classroom/ explains, “I can take the temperature of the room anonymously. This makes it safe for students to address potentially controversial themes,” he says. Perhaps most importantly, it empowers students to take initiative…

Christina Paxman, an Assistant Professor of Broadcasting and Professional Communication at Minot State University shares in this paper presented at the National Communications Association https://www.natcom.org/sites/default/files/pages/eTools_Slack_January_2018.pdf   how she uses Slack as a file storage system, and takes advantage of Slack’s app integration features.

Engineering Lecturer Jennifer Bernstein provides current students at Johns Hopkins University https://ii.library.jhu.edu/2019/04/12/using-slack-in-the-classroom/ opportunities to interview recent grads about their experiences working in the medical field.

There are many more ways that Slack can help support your teaching, learning, and communication needs. Do you want to share how you use Slack, or a similar tool in your class?  Or, do you have questions about which tools  best support your personal teaching needs or student learning outcomes?  Drop in on the first Monday of each month, for an informal conversations around teaching and learning. Next month (02/01/2021 at 11:00 AM) we will chat about the different ways Slack, Group Me, Microsoft Teams, and other tools can be used to communicate with students:  https://iu.zoom.us/j/81576128938 . ​

Pre-Course Survey

One way to improve engagement with your students is to learn more about them. A precourse survey is one way to help develop a connection with your students, and get to know them beyond what is shared in an introduction discussion.

What do you want to know about them?

Diligent student in college with classmates, taking notes of teacher lecture.

A survey can help you conduct a needs assessment about where your students are at in terms of prior knowledge, demographics, mindset, learning preferences, goals, content confidence level, preferred feedback style, and/or access to technology.  Because this takes place “behind the scenes” and is only shared with the instructor, rather than in a public discussion forum, you may be more likely to receive candid responses.

What strategies and skills will students need and/or develop in your course?

These kinds of questions can help students flex metacognitive skills and become more aware of their learning habits. As an instructor, this can help you provide more specific feedback on student work, suggesting similar strategies and stretch goals.

• Reflection on Strategies: Metacognitive reflection questions ask how students get things done. Do you take marginal notes or highlight as you read? What conditions do you need to do your best work?

• Planning Ahead: Beyond what has worked for students in the past, you might ask about strategies they will use specifically in this class. What times each week do you have earmarked to work on this course?

• Setting Goals:You might ask them to review the learning objectives, asking what they will commit to accomplishing. And beyond the learning objectives for the course, are there other skills or competencies they plan to work on in the course? Do they have any suggestions for the instructor about strategies for helping meet those goals?

During the first week of your course

Providing students with an opportunity to quiz themselves not on the course topic but on the course itself–how to get started in the course, how to navigate the course, what the course should help students accomplish, and how the course is structured–can help instructors send fewer emails saying, “It’s in the syllabus!”

Given multiple choice or true/false question types, these kinds of pre-course surveys can be automatically scored. Don’t forget to compose feedback for incorrect responses and allow multiple attempts!

What tools are available?

IU supports the Qualtrics survey tool and Canvas includes a dashboard feature that allows instructors to create a type of quiz called ‘ungraded’ that can be used as a survey. In Canvas, once the survey, or ‘ungraded quiz,’ is published online, students can login to their Canvas course page and participate. IU also has access to Google Forms and Microsoft Teams (Microsoft Forms are Available in the Channel and Chat features) for quick survey and quiz creation.

If you’d like support implementing a pre-course survey or questionnaire in your online class, or in any other aspects of teaching and learning, please contact me at your earliest convenience with your availability.

Happy New Year! New Publications in 2020 and 2021

Happy New Year,

I have not kept up on my post…so as you may have guessed, one of my New Year Resolutions is related to writing. To hold myself accountable, I enrolled in a writing class. However, I should mention that just because I haven’t shared a post hear in a while does not mean I have not been productive (writing wise anyway: see Google). My most recent publication is an edited book that I was fortunate enough to work on with Dr. Erik Byker. The Title is Elementary Education: Global Perspectives, Challenges and Issues of the 21st Century.

The book is organized into three sections: (1) context, (2) competencies, and (3) content. The context section examines the historical and current context for elementary education from international perspectives. The competencies section focuses on the skills and dispositions necessary for pre-service and in-service teachers to navigate the contours of elementary education in a global age. The content section explores elementary education subject matter—largely in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)—that will continue to eminent throughout the twenty-first century. Elementary Education: Global Perspectives, Challenges and Issues of the 21st Century is a timely book for internationally-minded educators, government leaders, parents, practitioners, and policymakers for gaining deeper insight into the critical role of elementary education in preparing children for our dynamic, interconnected, and globalized world. For more information on this book, click here.

Quick Updates - March 2017

At the beginning of this month, I was elected to serve as president of the Culture, Learning and Technology Division of AECT. I have served as VP of Communications for the past few years and am grateful for this new opportunity.  Also, I am happy to be part of the following edited volumes released this year:

• The chapter with Keith Heggart and Erik Byker in Culture, Learning and Technology: Research and Practice  describes how hip hop can be used as a pedagogical tool.
• The chapter in Learning and Knowledge Analytics in Open Education with Wei Zakharov,  Pat Reid, James Willis, and Donalee Attardo examines best practices for faculty interested in integrating social media into their pedagogical practice, and
• In the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education and Professional Development, Christopher Seals, Inese Berzina-Pitcher, Punya Mishra discuss the philosophies and practices that drive the MSUrbanSTEM Leadership & Teaching Fellowship Program.

I have four more publications in progress and look forward to sharing more about them later this year.

Hallmarks of Excellence in Online Leadership by the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA)

A colleague ( C. R. Wright ) recently shared with me the recently published report on the Hallmarks of Excellence in Online Leadership, by the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA). Below are the key leadership qualities identified in the publication:

1. Advocacy and Leadership within the University: Those charged with leading an enterprise must build internal alliances, and reflect the larger goals, values, and strategies of their institutions.
2. Entrepreneurial Initiative: Recognizing that online education is inevitably about innovation, experimentation, risk, and imagination, emerging leaders must have the skills and creativity to facilitate responsible change.
3. Faculty Support: Leaders must envelop their faculty with the tools they need to create education equal to, if not exceeding, that of the traditional classroom.
4. Student Support: Recognizing that online students demand a learning experience at least comparable to that on-campus, leaders must be ongoing advocates for students earning their degrees remotely from their institutions.
5. Digital Technology: Leaders must provide an environment that is current, dependable, and rich in the creative use of tools to enhance learning, interaction, and program integrity.
6. External Advocacy and Leadership beyond the University: Since online enterprises must represent their institutions to an often skeptical public, leaders must be an authoritative voice to regulators, accreditors, alumni, members of the business community, and many others.
7. Professionalism: Recognizing that emerging entities need policies and practices that demonstrate the integrity of a profession still establishing itself, those leading the growth of online learning must exemplify the highest ideals and contribute to a growing professional community on a national scale.

While all of these ideas are paramount, I have been spending quite a bit of time examining the idea of what the term "Entrepreneurial Initiatives" means not only for institution of higher learning , but the student. While the report focuses in on the online class as part of the brand of a university (the concepts and ideas of which are worthy of its own blog post), considering how authentic assessments can be used by students in a similar type of branding can be valuable in certain educative contexts. I work with educators and help them think through not only how their work in the online environment can be applied in the real world, but how how representations of their work can be used to create their personal brand beyond web portfolios. I am interested in how other disciplines view this idea, as well as more perspectives of what it looks like in the K-12 setting. Feel free to share your ideas in the comments.