Over the past few years, it has become popular in education to broadcast the “backchannel” to students during a large class through a dedicated Twitter hashtag or some other social media app. The idea is that it allows students to make comments on the
Escape rooms are becoming more and more popular in higher education. Participants solve a series of problems—each correct solution unlocking a clue or item to the next—while racing against the clock (or other teams). Knowing that this type of gamified learning format could potentially excite
The global pandemic has caused emergency shifts in how we teach. Online learning is nothing new, but transitioning a once-dynamic in-person class to a screen in a synchronous format poses some challenges for “new to synchronous” teaching faculty. As two department chairs at a mid-size
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Over the past few years, it has become popular in education to broadcast the “backchannel” to students during a large class through a dedicated Twitter hashtag or some other social media app. The idea is that it allows students to make comments on the content for everyone to see, thus adding to learning and motivating students to participate and think about the topics. Some early adopters even displayed the backchannel conversations on screen behind them as they were speaking.
But many instructors quit broadcasting the backchannel because it became a distraction to the students. Our minds cannot follow two conversations at once, and while many people think they can multitask, all evidence points to this being a fallacy. We are not genuinely listening to two conversations at once, we are just alternating our attention between the conversations, and in doing so missing the information that came while we were focused on the other conversation, like flipping between two television channels every 10 seconds.
The chat function on videoconferencing software broadcasts the backchannel and similarly splits student attention. An instructor can simply turn the chat function off, but we want students asking questions and thinking about concepts while they are learning. Plus, these comments make for good discussion fodder.
How do we facilitate student active thinking during live events without splitting their attention? We don’t want to tell them to hold their thoughts until open discussion, as ideas that are not recorded are soon forgotten as the instructor moves to new topics. It is OK to jot down ideas; that is what note-taking is for. We just don’t want these notes to become a parallel conversation during the activity.
One solution to this dilemma is to adopt a “gather and discuss” approach to comments. Instead of posting and discussing in parallel with the event, students post their thoughts as they occur to them without responding to other’s posts. Importantly, they are posted by topic, not just chronologically. Then the instructor and students can discuss these by topic at designated breaks in the presentation.
This approach requires the use of an outside chat system during the event. The internal chat and questioning system in a web conferencing platform can display content only in the order it was received, not by topic. Most importantly, the instructor channels the discussion ahead of time by creating topics that act as buckets for collecting posts; though the instructor can allow students to create their own topics as well. Then the instructor shares the comment board on the web conference screen and dedicates a few minutes for everyone to look over the comments. The instructor uses this time to draw out themes for discussion, and students use it to prepare for discussion.
While whiteboards are the best tools for hosting group chats by topic, most are designed for open-ended brainstorming and, as such, give users a blank canvas. The result: a disorganized compilation of comments posted at different locations and in different formats. It’s better to choose a system that offers a template of columns that you can label and edit for channeling discussion. Here are a few good systems for that purpose.
