Festival of Learning 2018

I will present about UBC’s efforts to implement and evaluate team chat as a learning technology for online and blended courses. Team chat (like Slack) is a transformative communication and collaboration technology, combining threaded discussions with real-time chat in an intuitive and flexible way. Features like persistent history, advanced search capability, file sharing, typing status, mobile apps, and emoji reactions add up to a versatile tool that is still easy to use.

Research shows how timely interactions with instructors, collaboration with classmates, and a sense of community can enhance teaching and learning. This is particularly important in an online learning environment. Team chat has given our students a direct communication channel to their instructor and each other, helping them connect, ask questions, seek clarification, collaborate, and build community.

Since 2016, the Faculty of Education has been piloting an open source team chat application called Mattermost on a UBC-hosted server. Unlike Slack or Microsoft Teams, which are both cloud-hosted outside of Canada, Mattermost allows us to keep student data secure in compliance with BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). Mattermost has been used in over 20 course sections across the faculties of Education, Arts, and Science. As of December 2017, the UBC Mattermost pilot consists of 100 daily active users, 300 monthly active users, and almost 70,000 posts.

Attendees will learn (and chat) about:

• Ways team chat can enhance learning 
• How team chat has been applied in real use cases including online program cohorts, learning communities, and research teams
• The relationship between secure, safe, transparent platforms and academic freedom 

Mattermost will be blended into the session, allowing attendees to choose the conversation(s) they wish to join, participate in real-time, network with colleagues, and carry on chatting after the Festival of Learning concludes.