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Lecture Hall Back-Channeling
emmastory writes "The New York Times is running a story on the phenomenon of lecture hall back-channeling - now that many conferences and universities have wireless access, some people discuss lectures via instant message or weblog as they happen. Although the article quotes an instructor at NYU, I haven't seen much of this in lectures I've attended there. I would guess it varies from department to department, but laptops aren't yet as common in classes as one might think. Either way, some people consider the practice rude, others consider it progress, and good arguments can be made on either side."
Not that anuone ever thought of pasing a note around in class, back in the pre-IM dark ages.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
While listening to lectures, I generally take extensive notes to keep my mind on the lecture topic and attention on the lecturer. Something like this would just be too distracting.
And really, like people are only going to chat about the lecture. Everybody I knew with a laptop in class was playing Quake.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
While working as an instructor for Sun I'd often have students using IM on the workstations while I was lecturing. The tip-tap typing wasn't all that much of a problem. And probably if they were only IMing each other about the lecture it wouldn't be that bad, but the students didn't confine themselves to IMing only in the classroom. They'd IM people at work, their wife/husband, their gf/bf etc.
The result was repeatedly dumb questions being asked. And before you start with that non-sense of "there is no dumb question" let me define it. If I say "X is a Y", then you stop your typing and ask "Is X a Y?" then it is a DUMB question. And there was lots of that while there was IM access. Students would hear something [me] in the backround mention some idea and when they were done typing their after-work bar crawl negociations they'd have an itch to ask a question about that idea.
I resolved to doing two things. I'd often ask other students to answer the question -- hoping to make it obvious that I just went over that. Or I'd disconnect the room from the firewall. Since most IMs aren't P2P this worked fine. The typing stopped. Attention was back on the guy in the front of the room.
Unless the class is huge, I don't see the point of back-channeling as helping the students get questions answered. Most professors hope to hear questions from the students, because the question is a good indicator if the prof has gotten his point across. Wthout that feedback lecture quality deteriorates.
--
For good mental hygiene, shave with Occam's Razor twice daily
...but laptops aren't yet as common in classes as one might think.
Nor should they be. If all you need a laptop for is to take notes, it becomes more of a hindrance than an advantage, especially in lectures on mathematics or lectures with many diagrams. You just can't quickly record mathematical symbols or graphical diagrams with a computer. Classroom use may become more justified when handwriting recognition software matures, but currently there is no good reason to bring a laptop to class.
Good note-taking has nothing to do with the medium on which the note is recorded, and recording everything said in lecture (which may be possible if you type faster than you write) is often not desirable. You need to filter what you hear and discern the important points from a lecture, not record a dictation. A simple notebook and pencil are perfectly sufficient.
It probably depends on the lecturer. If he/she is simply going to dictate or write up his/her notes, with no comments or thought, then an online presentation will probably be more useful. However, some lecturers work things out as they go, and it can be very useful to see their thought processes (especially if they make mistakes!). Some are very interactive, gearing what they present to the reaction they get. Some explain far more out loud than ends up on the boards/notes. And a few (very few) are simply good presenters, who are worth watching simply for interest or enjoyment. All of these would lose something in the transition to a web site.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Those drop boxes don't work. It's a lottery to see if your question gets answered and by the time the teacher reads it and responds, you are already way beyond that part in the lesson.
One thing that is important to remember is that most knowledge builds off of preexisting knowledge. If you fail to understand something early in the lesson, you could end up missing large amounts of material as the lesson progresses. That is why it is so bad when the student has to go back to the teacher afterwords to get a clarification on something taught earlier in the day. By the time they get the help they need, they're going to redo half of the lesson to catch up. Most professors and TAs don't have enough time to reteach entire lessons to the dozen students who didn't get it the first time.
The usual solution is for the student to ask the teacher to stop and clarify, but that is a tremendous time sink for someone who only has three hours a week to impart his knowledge. Once a class size becomes large enough, this solution becomes completely unworkable, and some students are left out in the cold. If used in moderation, these backchannels would be a great boon to most classes. IMHO
I read the internet for the articles.
There's a project currently going on at UC San Diego, which is aiming for something similar to that. The main webpage for the project, ActiveCampus, is located here.
I took a class a few quarters ago when this project first got started. Students could log into discussions about the lecture they were attending and post questions and answer others' posts. Other students could vote for posted questions so the professor would know which were most relevant. Information (and screenshots) for this can be found here.
My experience with this was not very positive. For the most part, the professor would halt his lectures every few minutes to check out what the students were concerned with. It seemed more a hindrance than a tool. Maybe if a TA was assigned to attend lectures and monitor the online discussions so the professor didn't have to, the system would work out better. Also, perhaps because it was new at the time and perhaps becuase it was a CS class, the questions students posted gradually declined into flames and/or trolls.
Its an interesting concept, but I don't know if colleges are ready for it.
Professors are not perfect people and what seems like totally obvious common sense to them may not come so easily to those who are learning it the first time.
Even if you listen intently, you won't understand everything all the time. This is why gaining a quick consensus on what was least understood while the professor is discussing it is important.
"If you want to discuss the lecture with people, wait until after it is finished"
If you wait until after the lecture, everything after the point where you did not understand will be gibberish in your brain. Then you have to find out about that one tiny thing, then you have to go back over the rest of the lecture to deduce what it means when the professor is not there. If you don't get to this by the start next lecture, then you'll be lost for that class too.