Mattermost Education Case Studies

Mattermost has been used in the Faculty of Education for three years. Instructors found it beneficial in three primary ways:

  1. Instructor to student just-in-time communication
  2. Student to student communication and collaboration
  3. Informal communication for building and sustaining learning communities

There are many specific use cases to highlight. This page contains some of them, and will be expanded.


Early Childhood Education

It has been used in the Early Childhood Education Program as a way for students to form community and spark connectedness with one another. Every Masters cohort has their own team, and every student can have a direct conversation online with their advisor. This advisor also uses Mattermost in the courses she teaches to encourage participation and foster a sense of community. She found it beneficial for this purpose, especially when used as a complement to virtual classroom software Collaborate Ultra.

Dr. Mari Pighini
Lecturer and Advisor

” … Mattermost chat has exceeded my expectations in terms of its ease of accessibility and also in how malleable a tool it is for students. … Students in all three [of my] programs have found [Mattermost to be] a safe and attractive space and a place where to share ideas, where to check-in and validate ways of expressing their interpretation of the literature, where they upload their drafts and resources, and where, more recently, they engage in small group discussions in a more private ways. I find the use of Mattermost chat also allows me to be responsive, as they are, in an easy, flexible, and timely manner.”


High Performance Coaching

Students in the High Performance Coaching and Technical Leadership program created a Mattermost team to stay connected while working at high levels in their field, wherever in the world they were. Instructors have access and may choose to make themselves available on the platform for day to day mentoring, but this is a student led space. Students valued that, unlike other platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, their data would never be sold. UBC safeguards all student data and takes the responsibility very seriously.


MET Social Lab

MET Social Lab connects the current and incoming students, faculty, and alumni of the Faculty of Education’s Master of Educational Technology program. MET is fully online, so Mattermost fills an important need for students to network and feel they have a shared place. It is used by MET during new student orientations, and alumni benefit from regular sharing of job opportunities.

“I really enjoy Mattermost. It gives you direct access to the course instructor, and provides you a place to ask questions to classmates. Great little tool for collaboration.” – MET student

“I like the fact that there’s the opportunity for more informal discussion. It also seems to get very fast responses from classmates and our instructor, which is nice to know when you’re unsure of something and would like fast answers. It mostly seems to be used for clarification on assignments, with some discussion of the course content and people posting interesting/relevant articles they’ve found in their scholarly pursuits.” – MET student

Global Storybooks


The Global Storybooks team used Mattermost to facilitate syncronous and asyncronous collaborations across time zones and countries.

“Mattermost has been absolutely essential over the last six months or so in coordinating our efforts across time and space, managing goals, conducting online meetings, assigning and following up with tasks, threading hundreds of intertwined messages on different topics, and providing mobile support for such things as quickly finding important messages from the archive. With the synchronous/asynchronous nature of Mattermost these were interwoven seamlessly.” – project member from LLED


More Use Cases

  • Scholars in the Digital Literacy Centre have created a space to contribute to one another’s research.
  • Teams of instructors in the Teacher-Librarianship Program use Mattermost to share experiences and strategies.
  • Educational Technology Support uses it daily to collaborate on making the best learning experiences for students and develop cross functional experience. Knowing that everyone is working hard as a team drives us stronger.
  • Indigenous Storybooks Project team members use Mattermost to collaborate from different locations.
  • A student coordinator leading a Student Directed Seminar used it to continue class conversations and connect ideas.
  • A Political Science Honours Thesis course used it to give one another feedback and support as they proposed and developed their paper for 8 months.
  • Summer Institutes have used it to continue meaningful connections and conversations beyond the duration of the institute.