Teachers in the networked world face many new challenges. As Temple University’s Barry Vacker puts it, instructors may find themselves “competing with the entire Internet” as students multitask during class with laptops and cell phones. But what if instructors could actually use the very tools that seem to be deteriorating students’ attention to increase student interest and productivity in class? One way instructors are exploring this is by encouraging interaction during class with what is called a “backchannel discussion.”
When an audience uses laptops or Internet-enabled cell phones to simultaneously engage in text-based discussions while a lecturer is speaking, it is known as the “backchannel.” Backchannel discussions have become popular at conferences to generate questions and fact-check speakers in real time, and these synchronous conversations are beginning to take place in college courses in ways that enhance the classroom experience.
No lecturer, no matter how experienced or entertaining, will ever keep every student interested 100% of the time. Networked discussions, however, encourage students to channel their desire for connectedness and interactivity into the content of the class rather than their Facebook walls. Being connected through networked discussions offer everyone in class a voice to comment or ask questions, even those who are typically too shy to raise their hands. Not only can all students participate more easily, they are also given an opportunity to create connections between concepts, experiences and other students during class without disruption. A networked classroom is much more active, and for students who have grown up with the participatory nature of the social Web, far more interesting.
For example, during a lecture, students in an ethics class could open the Chat tool in SPARK on their laptops to ask each other questions about the material being covered, thus eliminating confusions quickly and quietly while also developing examples to articulate their interpretations. A student in an algebra course could use the SPARK Whiteboard to illustrate how she solved a math problem using a new formula. The class can then point out that student’s error and instantly clear up any misinterpretations. Students in a film course could even use Twitter and BackNoise on their internet-enabled cell phones while watching a film to quietly identify and analyze the director’s use of lighting. In each case, the discussions can be archived and revisited by both the students and the instructors for future reference.
There are certainly risks to opening a class to backchannel discussions and this practice is not ideal for all courses. The discussions can become distracting; they can disorient students and make teachers feel like no one is listening. Yet students today are predisposed to multitasking in digital and physical environments, and they can adapt to focus on both domains appropriately. Perhaps the periodic acknowledgment of these discussions by the instructor, or moderation by a TA, would keep students more focused and on-topic. Though teachers may feel uneasy with the shifting focus of their audience, archives of the student discussions can be used as an evaluation tool for their performance by showing what students are consistently misunderstanding, or what was compelling or not so interesting. Having such feedback will allow instructors to adapt to student needs and maximize the quality of instruction. Another risk is that the backchannel discussions frequently get off track as students post unrelated content. However, this informal “chatting” without disrupting the flow of the class can increase a sense of community among the students while making formal discussions and group work more fun, interesting and of higher quality.
In a way, this is part of the purpose of going to college: creating a community of thoughtful individuals who come together to encourage more interesting research, creative ideation, and healthy debate. Backchannel discussions can contribute to this sense of community by transforming the classroom into an active, thinking network.
Contact Academic Computing for more information about getting started with backchannel discussions in your classroom!
More resources about backchannel discussions:
- Use Twitter hashtags to have all comments filtered into one location and BackNoise to track the conversation and allow users without Twitter accounts to join in. The 160 character limit of each comment is great for classroom use.
- University of Texas at Dallas professor Dr. Rankin collaborated with the Emerging Media and Communications (EMAC) department on “The Twitter Experiment.” They created a short video about it here.
- “…We’ve actually got a team of people working together. And Twitter is the glue that holds the team together.” Inside Higher Ed blog post about using Twitter in classrooms from Educause, 2009.
- The New York Times Technology column featured an article about backchannel discussions in 2003.
- The “Teaching with Classroom Response Systems” blog describes tips for using Twitter in the classroom.
- Liz Lawley identified four “backchannel modes” on the Many2Many blog.
Image by Joan M. Mas via Acuarela