Slack in education: a voice platform for quiet students a personal reflection using drawings

Emma M. Corby
Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:51:51 PDT

In this thesis, I will be exploring how Slack can be used as a platform for quiet students in the classroom. I do this by referring to barriers I faced as a quiet student myself. These barriers include the competitive atmosphere of learning, unheard communications for help, unread and unanswered emails, and limited connections with my teachers. The scholarship on Slack's presence in education hasn't yet researched the topic of Slack as a platform for quiet students to find their voice. In this thesis, I explore my own experiences as a quiet student and as a teacher using Slack; I don't have qualitative or quantitative research, however, my work is a start. I explore the ways that Slack can be researched and used as a tool in the classroom to give every student a voice, a place to express themselves, and a place to connect with their classes and their learning more deeply. While exploring the ways that Slack's platform can be used in a class, I use hand-drawn comics throughout my thesis; one of Slack's most powerful tools is its access to so many multimodalities. With my comics, my goal is to provide a deeper understanding on the affects and benefits of using multimodalities in a learning setting.