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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.
Gather and discuss
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.
Systems
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.
Padlet. One of the oldest and best-known group posting systems, Padlet provides a number of options for organizing a board, with its Wall format being ideal. A Wall board is structured into columns, with the instructor just needing to enter a title at the top of each column to draw together the posts by topic. Students can post content in a variety of formats—including text, image, link, and video—and they can like each other’s posts. Padlet also recently released a Zoom integration app. See a sample board below:
Dotstorming is built on a similar principle to Padlet in that an instructor can create a wall of columns to which students post thoughts or questions. It has less functionality than Padlet, which makes it simpler to use. One nice feature is that a board can be designed to collect votes. This makes it a useful conversation starter. An instructor can ask students a question, have them vote on the options, then announce the votes and start the discussion. Beginning with a vote is a great way to activate students’ thinking on a topic and get them interested in what their classmates have to say. Note how the medical ethics example below asks who should make decisions for a patient, with descriptions and photos of the three options for voting:
Canva. A graphic design tool, Canva may not immediately come to mind as an option, but its graphic organizer templates (of which it has an incredible array) work well for hosting discussion. Instructors can choose a template design that best matches their purpose, edit it, then grant students editing access to it by sharing a link, thus turning it into a whiteboard. In the example below, I have asked students to list the relevant considerations to solving a moral problem under the moral theory that applies to it:
