Over the past few years my team has been using Slack as our primary avenue for communication within the team. If you are not sure what Slack is, it is, basically, and IOS and PC application that allows a group of people to communicate through public and private channels and direct messages. While this has served us well over the past few years we feel it is time for a change. The reason for this is that we have found these issues in our current system:
Admin moderation is severely limited on direct messages and private channels
There is no “total shutdown” ability to stop communication for certain times of day
The real time conversations that take place are often distracting and take people away from more important work
What we’re looking for in an alternative is an ability for admins to monitor ALL public and private channels and DMs, an ability to block communications through the application at certain times of day or just at will, and something that is more of a forum style( Reddit or Chief Delphi esque).
If anyone knows of or uses any programs that you think would fit this description than your suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
To split hairs, Slack does allow for compliance exports but only on their Plus plan at $22.50 per user-year](Apply for the Slack for Education discount | Slack) with the education discount. Not exactly cheap, but a weekly/monthly/quarterly/whatever export would allow for any inappropriate communications to be found and dealt with.
May I ask why you’re seeking these features? Policing private messages seems to me like a losing battle on any platform - if people want to communicate person-to-person sans moderation, they can simply move to another medium. It might feel nice in principle to know that any communication that does not meet team standards is not taking place on the team’s platform, but for private communication it seems to me that’s more symbolic than it is practical.
We use Basecamp rather than Slack, as we like its larger feature set, but I doubt it does what you’re looking for.
They’re called Private Messages for a reason, they’re meant to be private. If a service has PMs you (more than likely) can’t (and shouldn’t) moderate them that’s just how it is. That, and if students don’t want you reading their messages, everyone has cell phones, or can use Skype or Discord anyways. Not to mention, I don’t know exactly how your team runs, but students still deserve privacy. It’s easier to just teach students to come to your with screenshots if issues arise.
Not entirely sure how Slack works, but on Discord you can just change server permissions so people with role “x” can’t type in chat. Can even have students make a bot do it automatically for you.
Almost everything online is real time, even Chief Delphi (just look at our Fantasy FIRST drafts). If your students are getting distracted, its probably not just a problem with Slack. Trying to remove the real time element is just putting a bandaid on the problem; they’ll find another way to get distracted.
We use Slack, and one of the ground rules is that “Thou Shalt Not Use DMs On Slack”. Might be a couple of exceptions, but our admin can tell if there’s an uptick. The other primary ground rule is that anyone can join any channel (except for the one and only private channel–which mentors are added to when they join the team). I’m pretty sure that creation of new private channels is disabled.
Take a look at Trellis! I don’t know much about it from an administrator point of view, but check and see if that’s what you’re looking for. Though I will say, trying to keep teenagers from talking to each other is an exercise in futility. And the more you try and monitor their private conversations, the greater lengths they’ll go to to avoid your efforts.
This is a really weird thing to request TBH, as others have said. So you’re likely not going to find something that allows a third party to monitor PMs.
an ability to block communications through the application at certain times of the day or just at will
Slack has individual user settings to turn off notifications (I think it happens at 2200 by default) but it’s on a per user basis. Discord with a bot could do this. Any reason you want to disable chat altogether?
and something that is more of a forum style( Reddit or Chief Delphi esque).
Slack has threads, which are nice, but CD and Reddit operate much differently, and one is much better than the other for conversation. What exactly are you looking for?
Slack does offer team sponsorships, and if you use the professional version (which you should get as a sponsorship benefit) I believe owners/admins can see what goes on in private channels.
If you’re looking for a new platform to avoid “The real time conversations that take place are often distracting and take people away from more important work”, you wont find one. That is not a problem of the means of communication, its a team culture problem. If people on your team are screwing off, it doesn’t matter if you use slack, Groupme, a massive text group chat, Azendoo, or any other alternative. People will still chit chat and if thats happening during meetings and distracting it will likely continue to happen.
Don’t cross the line of watching what students say in pm’s and private channels, those chats are private for a reason and they will likely just go beyond your team communication medium and just text or snapchat whatever they were going to say in pm’s.
If this is a problem for your team, focus on improving the culture and level of maturity of your students, especially when its directly taking away from work that needs to be done.
There is no team communication app that will do it for you.
Why don’t you allow DMs? 548 allows them and it’s useful so that new members, mentors, or anyone can easily message anyone without trying to find their number. It’s also simpler to just do all communication in the same place since you don’t have to switch between multiple apps to ask a certain person a question about something without bothering the whole group.
I wish it had better admin tools for things along these lines but I also understand the need for privacy.
On our team, the problem with DMs is that we seem to have a lot of students who use Slack as their personal messaging service. That just makes us lose older messages past the 10,000 limit quicker.
This was my initial thought, too. While “trust but verify” sounds great in theory, in the age of a thousand communication platforms, a technical solution to verification is easily defeated by using a different medium.
Why not level-set with the students, how you expect them to behave and treat one another – gracious professionalism, treat each other as you’d want to be treated, don’t be a jerk, however you want to frame it – and set expectations that if someone behaves inappropriately, private communications should be screenshotted, shown, shared, to a mentor or teacher who will handle the situation appropriately? See something, say something, as it were. Reinforce these norms, and perhaps even have as part of your team application or enrollment, a form that contains these expectations, that they sign saying they’re aware of them.
They’re enabled, sure, and used occasionally, but the long and the short is that it’s simpler to enforce proper communication standards (remember, student/adult minimum participants in conversations and all that) if DMs aren’t being used.
The team also uses email, text, etc. for other communications, or stuff that needs to find parents.
I greatly appreciate all of the insight so far. I understand that DMs shouldn’t be monitored and if there is concern about what goes on in them than there are better ways to do that than constant moderation. To clarify the need for communication blocking is that students will use it during school and in the middle of the night which generally distracts them from sleep and school work.
Rather than just alternatives, what form of communication does your team or agency use and why did you choose it over others like it?
P.S.: I am just a student on the team, and am just relaying the questions and concerns described by my mentors and coaches.
As noted previously, this is a losing battle. If they can’t chat through your team’s chosen communication medium, there’s another 100+ platforms they’ll go to. By restricting communication on the team platform you’re plugging the metaphorical leak instead of repairing the hole in the ship. Use this issue as a way to reframe the team culture around communication instead of trying to fix it halfway.
If I’m being totally honest, if a team communication software blocked my use during school hours (free periods and lunches too?!) and late at night (when else do you cad useless gearboxes?!) I would just send a real life text to whoever I’m trying to contact. Seems like more of a hassle for you and your mentors to set up, and it would probably take away from stuff cause at least in robotics slack I’m more encouraged to keep the topic about robotics.
It’s not the mentors responsibility to block the students from doing this stuff while they should be sleeping/studying, because if thats the solution these students will be screwed when it comes time to do that all on their own in college.
My team uses slack, and we love it. There aren’t really rules within slack like Eric’s team uses, and people use dm’s a fair bit. We only have a few private channels, but theyre all robotics-oriented and all share the goal of being successful as a team, so our leadership trusts its students to maintain that sense of seriousness and productivity even when they arent watching our every move.
Any move towards blocking communication over some means or at a certain period of time will just cause students trying to be productive to have to go through more road blocks to do so. If we blocked dm’s in our slack or didnt allow texting during school hours, everyone would just text each other. Might as well keep all of that discussion in one place, cause the last thing you want is those texts to feature something along the lines of complaints about mentors blocking that stuff.
I agree with everyone who’s stating this is a losing battle… With that being said if you don’t want the teams platform to be the cause of sleep loss or anything else like that then switch over to a google group and send emails rather than in slack. If students want to talk then they’ll send a text. It removes most outside parties and the students have to go out of there way in order to send their memes ect. I’m still with nick on you’re fixing a leak while missing the hole that’s next to the leak.
Best of luck in finding a better way to communicate than you currently have.
Monitoring/removing DMs from Slack or other similar team-organized communication platforms is, in my view, for liability reasons more than anything.
Anyone can get ahold of anyone else in a multitude of different communication plaforms in this era. The liability is when individuals connect via a “team sponsored” or “school sponsored” platform. What if an adult engages with a student innappriately via DM on a team Slack? Or other harmful words were shared over DM (see this sad story as an example)
Does removing DMs from slack prevent these incidents from happening? No. But it does remove the team-sponsored involvement in the direct conversation. I have heard of at least one FRC team that had enough inappropriate activity on a slack-like team platform that the school ordered all such communication channels be shut down. I don’t remember the exact terms, but it was pretty severe.
Like everything in life, you need to elvaluate the risk/reward of any new tool. We use slack and love it, but I also place a lot of trust and confidence in our students and mentors. We couple that trust with annual trainings on mental and emotional health, YPP standards, etc.