Our team uses Slack extensively for sharing ideas and collaborating on projects. We use it for texting, sharing images, storing ideas and links, and best of all, keeping our email inbox much tidier.
Over the last few months, my team and I have done well over 100 demonstrations of the Mechanisms app with faculty from across the country. These conversations have helped to shape both the user experience and the content of the software. Some of these discussions have gone to the next level, where faculty took their valuable time to work with us on specific features or reactions they wanted to see incorporated into our products.
We have had faculty vet the substitution and elimination pack – all 60 of them even before they were released. Another instructor went over the myriad of pathways involved in reactions of ketones and amines to produce imines and enamines. We had a video group chat with professors scoping out the possibilities for expansion of Mechanisms into biochemistry.
We wanted to move some of these conversations out of isolation and build a method for dialogue between instructors as we work together to develop these new learning tools and discover the “best practices” for use within the classroom.
So, the Mechanisms Slack group was born!
Just one week into this project, we have witnessed the kind of interaction we hope to foster! Thanks to Jose for an interesting catch in the structure pack of puzzles.
If you want to join us in this new community, please email me! julia@alchem.ie
(Later you will be able to Slack message me; we are doing our best to save your inbox, one message at time!)
Screenshot of a conversation in the Mechanisms Slack Channel.
