Using Discord or Slack

Building a Community of Inquiry, Live Micro-lectures, Office Hours, or Ask Me Anything (AMA)


Discord is a free platform for creating an online community. Like Zoom, Discord allows for live audiovisual meetings and screen sharing. Unlike Zoom, however, created channels or “rooms” are always open and chat contents are never deleted. And while there is no ability to record meetings themselves, instructors and students can record short “voice memos” or “video memos” to leave behind in the chat channel. This allows for asynchronous audiovisual conversations, which is something Zoom can’t do. Furthermore, Discord allows for instant and persistent file sharing: all you do is post the file or link to the chat stream. 


Here is a screenshot of the general Discord interface. The various chat and audio channels are on the left side, the channel’s chat stream is in the center, and a list of members currently logged in is on the right side. In the stream itself, comments as well as a shared link can be seen. 



 

While Zoom is more formal, Discord is typically considered more fun because students can react with emojis and have more creative profile customization. This comes at a cost, though, because Discord does not have the same security as Zoom. There is neither an access password nor a waiting room, so anyone can get in once they have the link. Someone with admin permissions, however, can still ban or remove a user from the server.


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