Creating a backchannel in class

To immediately follow up on the previous post and give an example of the sort of thing I have been looking into, "backchannels" are slowly making their way to classrooms. A backchannel is essentially a way for an audience to communicate its thoughts as it is attending a presentation, in real time, typically via the web and onto a screen. Think of the moving captions that one typically sees at the bottom of TV screens during the news, sometimes emanating from viewers. It is therefore a web-based, 2.0ish, class-room integrated chat.
Backchannels emerged in the last few years, particularly in techy conference, as a way to foster interactivity. I have heard some commentators refer to it as "listening to the murmur". Typically, in any large audience, only very few people will muster the courage to ask a question. We are all familiar with the phenomenon in class. Although the eager participants may be some of the best students, it is also a significant drawback to only ever hear from a minority of the class, and the active ones may "crowd out" other voices with the passage of time. A backchannel allows you to bring into the conversation the "silent majority" of students who do not normally participate. Not only that, but I think it allows you to bring them in in a new way, less formal and constraining perhaps than an oral question, which students may fear will be irrelevant or for some reason or other expose them to ridicule. In a future post I will explain what tools I have used for this, and which I recommend, but in this post I will only reflect on the nature of the tool as a pedagogical device.

First, a few warnings:

• Students will begin using the backchannel as a way to make jokes. This is de bonne guerre, as far as it goes. Once the tool becomes more familiar, useful and constructive comments will be made. Notwithstanding, you may want to indicate a few ground rules (no personal comments, no derogatory comments). I find that jokes are ok as long as they are funny and actually related to the content.
  
• This is the SMS generation so we should become accustomed to short, nimble comments. This is just as well because that is probably no more than you can read even as you lecture. However, the shortness does create a certain beat, which you want to surf on rather than constrain.
  
• It will be in the nature of some of these comments that they are not questions, or comments that require much futher comment. Not all comments are worth responding to. Students will read them. Comments should be seen as part of the development of thoughts proposed in the classroom.
• Anonymity or not is an issue. I think it does encourage students to participate, but there is always the odd risk that things will get badly out of hand. I am not committed either way just yet. Some students have logged in under their own name, whilst others have chosen pseudos. I think it is not unreasonable to let them decide.
• Some profs have experimented with moderation, typically by an RA (you wouldn't want to be moderating as you teach). This is not a bad idea, but it depends on the size of the class and how much you think your students are the kind that need to be moderated.
  

I am not totally settled on whether this is a fantastic idea or a really bad one yet. What I can say is this:

• Students responded positively and I think like the classroom as a place of experimental pedagogy. In fact, the rapidity with which they started participating suggested that this may have been something that they had started expecting would emerge sooner or later. Needless to say, I did not have much explaining to do about the technological aspects
• The possibility of making smart comments online is probably a motivation for some students and may make them more attentive
  
• I tended to notice comments sometimes after they were made, which created some awkwardness when I tried to backtrack to whatever (good) point a student had made.
• I need to get better at multitasking on a podium. I can see the potential for classes becoming a lot more chaotic and less linear. Maybe not a bad thing?
  
• Quality of comments went up with sessions
• I got a distinct feel for how at least some students felt about the subject matter. The critical comments were most noticeable, and it occured to me that maybe they were easier to make using this medium.
• I think good backchannel participation sends a positive signal to the class by highlighting a certain level of engagement with the ideas discussed.
• You may have a problem if only part of your students use laptops in class. I am planning on remedying this by exploring options that allow students to send messages by SMS. I think the ubiquitous netbook is probably not far down the road.
• There is a danger that even if the comments are good, students will be distracted by them and wander off.
• It may be useful to ask questions specifically for the backchannel rather than just wait for spontaneous comments. If you have lots of students, though, that poses instant problems of aggregation for which other tools may be better suited.
  

Class 2.0

The amount of thinking that has gone into renovating the classroom, what we do in it, how we interact, and even what defines the classroom in recent months is phenomenal. It is clear that we are only a few years from a true revolution in classroom practices, in comparison to which the introduction of powerpoint presentations in the 90s will soon look like a very old story indeed.
One thing that has struck me since the gradual introduction of laptops in many classrooms, to which Wifi was soon added, is how little is being done with the available technology. Laptops sit there, but they are largely idle from a pedagogical point of view. At best, laptops are used as sophisticated typewriters to take notes; at worst, as we all well know, they are used to do anything from chatting to playing poker or watching movies. Laptops loaded with communications technology are used to communicate with the outside world, but never to interact in class. It is remarkable how little progress has been made in harnessing the power of such tools to forge a new classroom experience.
In fact, the attitude has often been one of suspicion from some academics. Witness the debates on whether Wifi should even be available in class - I even heard talk of acquiring expensive technology to scramble the Wifi signal which the University had just spent considerable amounts of money equipping us with. Computers are seen as a distraction rather than a pedagogy enhancer and a tool that has the potential to revolutionize the way we teach.
The main problem is of course bridging the emerging "screen divide" in class. Computers are used to escape class occasionally, and the screen itself creates a physical bareer between students and teachers (admittedly that physical bareer is getting smaller with the new generation of netbooks but still). More importantly, wired laptops create a (some would say unfair) competition for profs. As students become more and more used to being just clicks away from the information they need (or think they need), it is only natural that they should start expecting forms of teaching that are themselves more interactive, hyperlinked, and participatory.
The way out seems to be to find ways to invite oneself in the computers or, more realistically for the moment, to make computers an integral part of the learning experience. New, fast and cheap web technology is making this possible. In forthcoming posts, I will present some of my current experiments with these tools, but my sense is already that if we are to get students' attention we need to incorporate into low-tech (and quite often justifiably so) teaching, elements of high tech that rival with what students are becoming accustomed to.