Rachael Kearney, director of the fully online BS in Dental Hygiene program at OSU, was looking for a better communication tool for her students. They requested an app to communicate among themselves and with faculty, and email or the Carmen discussion board were not what they had in mind. They wanted something that works on their mobile devices where they could follow conversations of interest to them and ignore the others. They wanted instant notifications (unlike the Carmen discussion board) and the ability to respond quickly and simply as they do in a text message (unlike email).
Rachel found Slack and implemented it program-wide with channels for individual courses and a channel for the whole program. Students can also chat with each other directly in private conversations. Slack allows sharing of files like PDFs and images and integrates with other applications like Google Drive and Dropbox.
Do you think Slack might work for your team or student group? Email Joni Tornwall (.2) for access to a recording of Rachael’s presentation and her slides. If you decide to use Slack with your College of Nursing group, please let me know! We have tech-savvy assistance to support you, if you are interested.