WhatsApp has some very useful features that will help you to manage your group. If you are mentoring on WhatsApp, here are some useful things to know which will make your life a lot easier.
First: Student-proof your phone
Don’t forget you can change notifications – different groups and even people can be given a different notification tone, if you want to.
Set your Do Not Disturb settings (this is a phone setting, not a WhatsApp setting). Some students have had the urge to cook (and post) after midnight in the past! They are not expecting a response, but they are just so excited and proud they can’t hold back.
Contacting people via WhatsApp
Usually, WhatsApp only allows you to contact people that are contacts in your phone. However, it’s possible to contact people directly, that are not in your phone contacts, if the phone number has been sent to you (this works for WhatsApp web as well as on your phone). You can send phone numbers to yourself and then click on them to send a WhatsApp.
Ways to Engage
Mentors have been very creative with how they engage with their WhatsApp groups. There is no right or wrong way. Here are some ideas beyond the standard text messages:
WhatsApp voice messages- if you’re worried about the literacy of a participant, you can record a voice message in the group, instead of sending a big amount of text
Whatsapp Voice Calls – sometimes this personal touch makes all the difference with a student that’s not responding in the group.
WhatsApp Side Chat – sometimes a private message is the way to go! People may be embarrassed to talk about problems in a group.
WhatsApp video calls – you can try setting a time to have a chat with your whole group – great for social isolation. Check with your students if their data is limited though.
WhatsApp Tutorial: using the video chat feature, you could even do a demonstration or cook together
Things you need to know
- No-one can see anything, text, media or links, posted from before they joined. All they get is the info/about section (which your coordinator should have populated).
Before that it will be just one big blank. So if someone joins your group late, then they need to have links etc re-posted. - As admin, you are able to remove people from the group – use the info section to find them and do this
- You can also delete posts – hold down on the offending post and press “delete for everyone”
- Everyone can see everyone else’s phone numbers. This is why we keep the groups small and private, to protect everyone. Should there be any issues, don’t forget you can block people, for more details see here
- You can get WhatsApp on your laptop! This is really a godsend, no more typing things slowly into your phone, and cutting and pasting are a doddle! However, you will still need to add students to your contacts on your phone to add them to the group.
To find out how, visit this WhatsApp page:
https://web.whatsapp.com/
Super great tips
- As Admin, you can invite people to Whatsapp Groups using a group invite link from the info section (which can be texted to them). This can be useful but not everyone knows how to use them, so some people will still need adding manually; they may also be wary of clicking on random links unless you tell them what it is.
- WhatsApp conversations are very linear and sometimes you may want to reply to a comment made several sentences ago. This looks like this:
- To do this, hold your finger on the message and pull it right (in Android) or left (iPhone)
- It’s possible to see who has seen/read your messages, even within a group. Hold your finger on the message to select it and then click on the
symbol in the header bar (Android), or pull the message right (iPhone). This is very useful to see if someone hasn’t even read the messages, or has and isn’t responding. - Take a look at the group media section of the group (in the info). There is a section with links. This is particularly useful as sometimes those videos you posted get lost further back in the chat. But students can access them very easily and quickly here, so if your chat is getting long, remind people of this fact (most people don’t know this).
- You can bold text by putting asterisks around it like this:
*this text will become bold in whatsapp*
What to do if someone disappears
If someone isn’t responding, try addressing them directly. Sometimes messages to a group are impersonal and it’s not clear who’s being asked. You can address them directly by putting @ and then typing their name – this will tag them directly. Alternatively, you can message them in a “side chat” – select “reply privately” to a message, or open another WhatsApp chat with them. People may feel more comfortable about revealing problems in private.