Students would share their course work, get feedback from each other, and I was able to answer questions directly. Much to my surprise, the activity was extremely high in the community AND incredibly motivating. Thanks to a proper onboarding process (outlined below), a whopping 70% of my course students made the transition from signing up for the course to signing up for Slack as well. So, would this hinder usage? The answer was a resounding NO! The first time I experimented with using Slack instead of Facebook for a discussion forum for my online course on branding, my students LOVED Slack. It definitely doesn’t have the mainstream adoption that Facebook has.

Our only hesitation: would our members feel intimidated using an app that they likely hadn’t used before? Though it’s been around for years now, Slack still feels like it’s only widely known in the design/tech/startup bubble. Paul is a pretty smart cookie so I figured if it was working for him, it could definitely work for us. We had never even considered Slack as a community option for a course or membership until years ago I saw my friend, Paul Jarvis, using it to connect his students in his freelancing course, Creative Class. Slack was originally created as a chat app for teams to communicate with one another. So if Facebook groups are out, how do you get your students or community members to communicate in a private yet easy-to-navigate environment?

Neither one of us has logged in to Facebook for personal use in literally years. (Even if you’re in a closed Facebook group, let’s be honest, you’re one click away from news article link and baby photos in my feed.) And…Ģ) We want the community experience to be enjoyable for us, the course creators or community creators, as well, and the idea of spending hours every day on Facebook talking to students or members is NOT enjoyable. However, what we dislike about going that route are these two things:ġ) Facebook is far too distracting an environment to allow for focused communication around learning. The way we see this “course community” feature typically accomplished in the online course world is through a closed Facebook group.

Slack or a Facebook Group for your business community? The choice is clear for us: Slack. Did you stumble on this article looking how to setup your own automated Slack invite portal? Click here to skip to that section!

Slack group chat