UBC Mattermost Chat Pilot

Several people are typing...

Follow along: http://slides.com/linkletter/mmlava/live

What's Mattermost?

Not "just chat"

• Asynchronous and synchronous

• Persistent history

• Threaded replies

• Mobile apps

• Custom notifications

• Extensible

+ Open Source

+ Hosted at UBC

*visual aid only

This is Slack

Search
@ mentions
File/image upload
Typing status
Timestamps

• Direct Messages (1-1, 1-Many)
• Online Status

• Topic-Specific Channels
• Public and Private
• Anyone can create
• Multiple teams are supported

This is Mattermost

Microsoft Teams

Google Hangouts Chat

Workplace by Facebook

Chat is growing

But what is happening?

Email is dying

Faculty of Education Mattermost Pilot

15 Teams

210 Users

77 Channels

7297 Posts

MEd in Early Childhood Education

100% online

Two cohort-wide shells

Five credit courses

Online cohort shells

• Building community
• Status updates
• Clarifying questions
• Encouragement

Online course shells

• Mattermost "as an option" didn't usually spark
• Students use other platforms and those have inertia
• FIPPA compliance means we can design for required use

Typical pilot course

Atypical pilot course

What happened?

Literature Circle Group

• Students meet 3-4 times to discuss a book of importance in the field and prepare a presentation
• 4 members meet three times for 1-2 hours
• Instructor suspects students used to use BB IM and switched over
• Different time zones - maybe late night use was a factor?
• Text is more accessible than speech

Master of Educational Technology (MET)

100% online

One program-wide shell

Two credit courses

MET Social Laboratory

Current MET student created a forum for students and alumni to socialize and share ideas.

MET Social Laboratory

Who are we?

What are our shared concerns?

Can we together create a stronger network of teachers and education technology specialists?

Do we have information and experiences that others in our community might find valuable or interesting?

Do we have ideas of things we might create together or ways that we can improve our shared experience in MET?

This sparked!

Top opportunities

• Student-Instructor Communication
• Student Collaboration
• Learning Communities
• Research?

• Honing research papers
• Attending conferences
• Monitoring experiments
• Building custom plug-ins
• Recognizing colleagues' input
• Creating lab-wide to-do lists
• Briefing new lab members
• Blowing off steam

How scientists use Slack

“It's a remarkably quick way of building consensus.”

http://www.nature.com/news/how-scientists-use-slack-1.21228

Pilot Evaluation

• Evaluate whether team-based chat enhances teaching and learning
• Develop models for effective use
• More competitors - is Mattermost still best?

Next steps?

Sign up and give it a try!

Dig in: bit.ly/mattermostschema

Regroup and look at our data?

(sign-up link removed)

Email ian.linkletter@ubc.ca