Mattermost试点期间发生在哥伦比亚大学2017/18 academic year. After the pilot concluded, the LT Hub gathered feedback from instructors, teaching assistants (TAs), and students to evaluate the tool’s perceived strengths and weaknesses, and to make implementation recommendations.
Mattermost自托管开源chat tool for facilitating online communication and collaboration. In the context of teaching and learning, Mattermost allows for the creation of course- or cohort-based “teams.” Each team receives access to an online space where instructors and students can freely share messages and files. Conversations can occur in public channels, private channels, and direct one-on-one messages. All posts are open-ended and searchable, allowing individuals to follow conversations as they happen or return later on.
Mattermost was released and supported for a trial run in more than 11 courses, including Arts and Science, but predominantly from Education. Half were at the master’s level, with first-year, third-year, and fourth-year courses comprising the rest. Most of the courses were online, with only a handful offering an in-person classroom component. Interviews took place with seven instructors and one teaching assistant, and 202 students responded to surveys.
Instructors taking part in the pilot were interested in improving efficiency in communicating with students and enhancing the student experience, especially for distance courses.
Perceived strengths
良好的一对一教练 - 学生沟通: Mattermost helped filter course-specific messages for instructors into one space and provided new useful venues (e.g., private channels, direct messages) for checking in with individuals.
“这是与他们聊天的好方法。”
“We could just have a quick dialogue connection and move forward.”
Ability for students to answer each other’s questions：教师可以在公共渠道中的常见问题答案。
“In many cases, they will ask questions in the open town square environment.”
“Someone else could provide the answer without me.”
Stronger sense of online community, when uptake is high: With the active participation of peers, students seemed to engage each other more.
“They have super rich conversations that had nothing to do with me.”
“Asking each other ‘hey what are you doing with regards to this activity?’ or ‘I just saw this and I thought I would share it with you.'”
Modern, relevant interface and interactivity：使用差点，被视为为在现代工作场所使用的通信空间准备学生的一种方式。
“If people can get familiar with these kind of tools that are actually being used in real environments, that’s kind of meta teaching.”
Potential of persistent learning space：最重要的是个人课程中可以存在，以便学生可以随着时间的推移维护对同一个共享空间的访问。
Perceived weaknesses
关于教学团队工作界限的压力：实时聊天在任何地方随时聘用更多机会。并非所有教师/ TA都欢迎这种恒定的连接。
“When you’ve got 150 students, there’s an expectation to always be around.”
“I’m really really responding to them all the time.”
不清楚鼓励学生的吸收多少钱：学生已经使用了许多沟通工具，并且并非所有工具都将倾向于这种格式。教师不确定推动他们多少钱。
“Some students didn’t want to engage that way at all.”
Some students didn’t…”feel uncomfortable with the trend of more and more and more.”
In some cases, there was a need for more functionality:To help assign marks, some instructors required better participation and activity statistics.
Student experience was largely reported positive (45%) or neutral (43%). Open-ended responses implied that, rather than neutral ratings indicating apathy about the tool, students genuinely“感到混乱”and often saw“there are upsides and downsides”尽此目的地。
Quantitative benefits
虽然学生同意教师报告的福利与教师沟通并获得问题的快速答案，但虽然学习活动的益处变得各种各样的意见。
与教师沟通
快速回答课程相关的问题
Understanding the course topics
Completing individual assignments
Completing group assignments
Preparing for quizzes or assessments
Connecting generally with other students
Contributing my own thoughts and opinions
Perceived strengths
对同伴互动和连接的乐于助人: Students noted the overall benefit of being able to interact with each other through this medium.
“I liked the ability to connect and chat with classmates in real time.”
“Public discussions were very helpful in directing me.”
Good overall ease-of-use and features: About 59% of students agreed with the statement “Mattermost was easy to use” and qualitative comments highlighted specific useful features such as notifications.
Mattermost was easy to use
Immediacy of interactions removed blockages quickly: The ability for students to reach their instructional teams and/or peers and hear back immediately helped resolve issues efficiently, so they could get back to work.
“The ease of being able to have quick communication with my professor and TAs made me more inclined to ask questions.”
很高兴与同龄人分享非正式空间，当吸收很高时：对于静态讨论板可能会邀请的静态讨论，以静态讨论的方式达到更多和不同内容的非正式感觉。
“Lots of valuable additional information that…wouldn’t be in a more formal discussion.”
Perceived weaknesses
Platform disconnect from primary course sites: The lack of integration for Mattermost made it feel inconveniently isolated from the rest of the course.
“It was on yet another platform.”
“Made it more difficult to make the effort each week to check up.”
Information overload with existing communications commitments: As instructors suspected, not all students welcomed another online space to monitor.
“许多其他沟通方式以跟上。”
“Checking it on a frequent basis makes me feel overwhelmed and distracted from other things.”
Usability issues, mostly as more content added: With lots of activity, channels can quickly become clogged.
“有时令人压倒和耗时才能互动。”
“It’s not easy to sort through and find what’s relevant to me.”
Feeling of being left out at times: Students were not always available or ready to engage when their peers were online.
“When I get a chance to log-in, often I feel very ‘out of the loop’ of the discussions.”
The following are recommendations for how Mattermost could best be implemented to maximize perceived benefits and minimize perceived shortcomings as a pedagogical tool.
- 为较小的学生组建频道（约10-30）: Help students meaningfully contribute and interact without feeling drowned out or overwhelmed, especially in more extensive courses.Learn more »
- Organize content in clear channels and guide organization: Model and explain to students how best to use areas and features to create a shared understanding of effective communication.Learn more »
- Set explicit expectations around availability of instructional team: Tell students how and when instructors/TAs will interact in real-time vs. with delay.Learn more »
- Integrate with the Learning Management System or regularly prompt use from other course sites: Make chat feel like an integral and useful part of the course, even if it’s external to the primary course site.Learn more »
- Set loose guidelines for student participation: Decrease student stress and disengagement with norms other than 24/7 participation, including:
- 安排适用于大多数人的实时讨论的特定时间。
- Highlighting a single channel, hashtag, or thread weekly to help students who aren’t broadly engaged to focus on one conversation.
- Adding marks or badges to reward participating.
- Assuring students they can meaningfully contribute later (not everything has to be real-time).
- Helping students learn how to determine manageable individual use.
- 使用教师或TAS强调私人通信选项: Highlight the value of one-on-one student-instructor/TA engagement opportunities, especially for fully online courses.Learn more »
- 解释为何到最重要的是其他更熟悉的聊天工具: Justify students learning another interface while explaining and educating them on the importance of privacy in social media platforms.Learn more »
Download and share theMattermost Pilot Evaluation Outcomes(PDF).
For help getting set up with Mattermost at UBC, contact theLT Hub或者你的Instructional Support Unit.
For more information on this pilot and its outcomes, contactIan.Linkletter@ubc.ca.,joe.zerdin@ubc.ca, orletitia.englund@ubc.ca.
访问UBC的试点进程的更多信息，访问how pilots work.