Slack: “Slack 101” Lessons and Resources

Objectives and Overview

This lesson introduces the Slack 101 lessons created by the Slack team and provides guidance on getting started.

Lesson Objectives

• Access and explore the Slack 101 lessons provided by Slack
• Identify the recommended Slack lessons
• Begin working through the recommended Slack lessons

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Slack Lessons

The Slack team has created a series of great introductory lessons. Many tools have great online guides for how to use their tool. Knowing how to find and navigate these types of resources is a crucial digital literacy skill. This section provides an overview of accessing these resources. You don’t need to go through every lesson in the Slack 101 course. Let’s jump in!

Slack has an entire course for new users. Click on Resources -> Resource Library in the main menu and select the Slack 101 course. Here’s a gif showing the steps:

Slack’s Resources Library has a lot of great content. To access it, click on Resources in the main menu at the top of the webpage:

From there, click on the Resources Library submenu and then find the Slack 101 course:

Once you’re on the Slack 101 page, you can start looking at Lesson 1. Here’s a gif showing how:

Click on Lesson 1: What is Slack?. This loads the lesson content.

After you click, the course content loads. You’ll be able to scroll and see a table of contents on the left sidebar:

Navigating the Lessons

Now more than ever before there are online lessons, courses, tutorials, videos, and other resources. There’s often so much content available online that it’s hard to know where to start. This can be overwhelming at first. Recognizing which online content to prioritize when learning is an important skill that requires practice.

The lessons created by Slack are a great chance to practice this skill since you don’t need to work through every lesson. If you finish the recommended lessons, be sure to work through the other content. Let’s take a look at which ones to prioritize!

Lesson 1

It’s usually helpful to read an introduction/overview lesson. This one includes a Slack overview video. Definitely watch the video and take a look at the image showing Slack’s benefits:

After watching the video, check out the image and text highlighting the advantages of Slack:

After reviewing these pieces, head to Lesson 2!

Lesson 2

Lesson 2 includes instructions for setting up Slack. You’ve already done this, so you can skim over it. It’s often useful to reread something you’ve already done to become even more familiar.

There’s a really solid walkthrough of Slack workspaces, so be sure to check that out:

The Setting up your profile section is helpful as well. Set up your Slack profile while reading through this section:

Before moving on, make sure you’ve completed everything outlined in the Your next steps section:

Let’s move on to Lesson 3!

Lesson 3

This lesson contains great content for navigating Slack. It’s recommended to go through this entire lesson. Start by checking out the navigating Slack section and read through the entire lesson:

This is a crucial lesson since it helps you to build familiarity with Slack’s interface. Be sure to have Slack open and follow along with the lesson content. When you’re comfortable, move on to Lesson 4.

Lesson 4

This lesson is about communicating and starting conversations. This is another important lesson for you to actively practice as you work through it. This means that you should be following along and doing each of the things yourself. For example, be sure to send a message when you’re reading about how to send messages. Let’s jump in!

Start by reading about channels. Since you’re using Slack as part of an organization, you may not have access to all of the channels since some are private. Keep this in mind as you’re exploring Slack.

The next section is about writing messages. Be sure to practice sending messages to your peers as you read through this section:

Before moving on, make sure to review everything outlined in the Your next steps section:

What’s Next?

If you’ve finished the lessons (and actively practiced as you went!) then you’re ready to move on. Consider checking out the rest of the lessons provided by Slack. They’re high quality and will level up your Slack skills. Even if you don’t do them right now, you can always revisit later. You may find yourself stumped on a certain Slack feature that’s covered in the later lessons!

You may also want to save this guide to revisit later: Top 5 tips for getting started in Slack