A recent survey by Sferum highlights the most valued messenger features among educators, with surveys and large-file transfers topping the list. The study reveals how teachers leverage chat tools to organize tasks, share resources, and maintain clear boundaries between work and personal communications. These tendencies reflect a broader push toward more organized and efficient classroom coordination through mobile platforms, where timely information and seamless collaboration drive daily workflows.
According to the findings, teachers most frequently use surveys to gather quick input, plan activities, and gauge student understanding. The next most popular function is keeping personal and professional messages separate, a practical feature that helps educators manage workload while protecting private conversations. The capacity to send large files stands out as essential for sharing handouts, multimedia assignments, and project materials, followed closely by voice messages and video notes that convey nuance and tone that text alone may miss. Teachers also value message pinning to highlight critical announcements, text-to-speech conversion for accessibility, channel creation to organize topics or courses, and folder-like grouping to keep content orderly.
Usage patterns show a high level of daily engagement with instant messengers for business-related communication. A significant portion of teachers report active dialogue across multiple conversations each day, with a portion handling several threads, while others conduct fewer exchanges. This spread illustrates the diverse needs of educators—ranging from frequent real-time collaboration to more episodic information sharing—across school communities and districts.
When asked about ideas for non-standard messenger capabilities, participants suggested features that would streamline classroom management. Ideas included the ability to check and grade homework directly within chats and the option to use messaging services without an internet connection, which would be particularly valuable in areas with fluctuating connectivity or during fieldwork. These responses point to a demand for deeper integration between communication tools and teaching workflows, as well as more resilient access to essential resources in varied environments.
Within the educational profile on VK Messenger, Sferum enables educators to exchange messages, conduct online queries, and share educational materials such as files up to 4 GB in size, as well as photos, videos, and surveys. The platform also introduced a beta interactive whiteboard and supports channel curation across a wide range of educational topics, further enhancing collaborative and lesson-planning capabilities in a single, centralized space.
The study was part of a broader forum for classroom teachers, gathering feedback from a diverse group of educators to understand how messaging tools can better support teaching and administration. The insights emphasize practical priorities such as efficient resource sharing, structured communication, and reliable access to instructional content, underscoring the evolving role of mobile messaging in modern education.