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."

Comments

Somebody get to work

[TopShelf]

One upside that can result from this is a refinement in questions that get asked of the speaker at the end of a presentation. Obvious ones can be resolved within the back-channelers, while insightful ones could rise to the top.

Heck, someone should develop a wireless /-style solution to accept potential questions and have the back-channelers rate them during the lecture, a la /. Interviews. For larger speeches where the number of attendees is high and the time for Q&A is limited, this could greatly improve the quality of the session...

Re:Somebody get to work

[Morgahastu]

Maybe the students wouldn't have so many questions if they actually listened and instead of posting questions and rating others. If you want to discuss the lecture with people, wait until after it is finished.

Re:Somebody get to work

[altp]

This suggestion could also help the problem where people are afraid to ask questions alloud. If the system allows for anonymous questions and votes, basic concepts that students are having trouble grasping can be addressed again, that were previously being over looked by teachers until test time.

Our school won't install WiFi...

[phr00tcake]

academic integrity is their reasoning behind it. Of course all my friends sharing answers through SMS have no complaints...

Discussing the *lecture*?

[Patik]

Here at RPI, where laptops have been required for five years now and ethernet/wireless is readily available, there is a lot of in-lecture IMing and conversation -- but none of it really pertains to the lecture. Most students who do this are too busy doing personal browsing and conversing to pay attention to the lecture.

Re:Discussing the *lecture*?

[pergamon]

Rose-Hulman has been requiring laptops and having wired ethernet in nearly every classroom since 1995, the year before I got there. They've since added wireless which I believe gets the rooms that weren't able to be wired easily.

While I saw and was part of some of the type of on-topic conversing going on back then, it wasn't a large part of the usage of the laptops. Aside from where they were explicitly used as part of the lecture, I used mine for about 1/2 on and 1/2 off topic.

For instance, during math and science classes it was very useful to be able to do and play around with complex calculations quickly while a lecture was going on. The ability to do bits of research in realtime helped too. And yes, some real-time conversing on the subject.

I guess some of my usage fell in-between on and off topic. Things like working on homework for that or other classes, being able to do little bits of work on projects as you happen to think of things during classes, speaking with or emailing team members, that kind of thing. Education related, but not necessarily related to the topic at hand.

As for off-topic, that ranged from emails to web surfing to playing network games with other people in that and other classrooms around you. 95% of that probably happens in the first quarter of school, though. That kind of goofing off drops off pretty quickly as the novelty wears off and as you realize just how much you're paying for that time. Many (probably most) of the profs were too intense to be able to do other things anyway.

I've recently learned that my high school will begin requiring/providing laptops in this coming school year. The whole campus is already bathed in 802.11b goodness. It will be interested to see how *that* turns out...

weblog? what?

[croddy]

most people I know do this with cell phone text messages. a weblog's just not a messageboard.

Meeting Back Channel

[Snot Locker]

Several of us at work have used an IM back channel during conference calls and meetings. Usually its a MST3K-like commentary on the goings on. It's a good BS-meter for a meeting -- the more sarcasm on the channel, the more likely the meeting is utter BS.

Rude? Probably... but anything on the IM back channel was in our heads anyway, so perhaps it's just good therapy :-)

Hydra and Conference Sessions

[DaRat]

I've seen this sort of lecture discussion during conference sessions using Hydra (a collaborative editor available for Mac OS X). A group of us ended up having a parallel discussion about the conference topic while the session was ongoing and at the same time the session moderator used Hydra to take notes.

The process was quite interesting and helpful for me since it allowed me to interact with other participants and gain new perspectives on the session topic.

I could see how a lecturer might not appreciate Hydra, blogging or anything else like it since it could basically be a way to silently pass notes, chat, and otherwise not pay attention to the lecture. But, there isn't much the lecturer can really do other than making it important to listen and pay attention.

University must be too easy

[swordgeek]

Heh. When I was in university, about 15 years ago (ack! How'd that happen?!), I needed to point every single brain cell at the lecturer in most of my classes. (And then there was 'introduction to statistics,' which was where we played poker under our desks. :-)

Maybe it's a matter of course material. I don't honestly thing that University is getting any easier--probably the opposite in fact--but laptops and wireless might be leading the charge away from frantically taking page after page of notes with a cramped hand, while trying to absorb the information at the same time. If so, it's probably a Good Thing. (Of course, some fields are harder to move to the computer. Writing out the formulae in phys. chem. and quantum mechanics strikes me as still a pen-and-paper exercise)

Re:University must be too easy

[Firehawke]

I don't know. I think a lot of it comes with the mentality of the user-- and college really IS a place where you're spending your own cash.. flunk out and you're the only one suffering.

I could see myself using one of the new tablet PCs to take notes, drag an IM window over to the side, and drop a quick message to a friend about a topic I'm not quite familliar with. The nice thing about using one of the tablet PCs is that you could use a keyboard for most notes (avoid the hand cramps and be able to get the notes as fast as the instructor says them without using shorthand..), then scribble out a formula on the screen as needed.

You could actually keep digital backups of your notes, print them out, email/dcc/IM them to a friend.

At the very least, it's an idea worth experimenting with.

sounds like a great idea!

[Ikeya]

Also as previously mentioned, real-time interaction potentially with the teacher would be great! Have certain people in the class be mods so the teacher doesn't get tons of anonymous "you suck" messages.
Also, it would be great to get WebEx or Netmeeting or something like that working with it too to provide interactive whiteboard/diagram support. Perhaps even interacting with Smart whiteboards like are installed at my University, perhaps the whiteboard could be input realtime to each of the laptop clients logged in. This would make it easier to see diagrams from longer distances, allow students to save the diagrams for studying later, and would also allow realtime feedback if a student had a question. (i.e., they could draw a circle around the trouble area momentarily.).

Neat stuff!

ikeya

Re:Doesn't sound like a great idea

[Phillip2]

"now that many conferences and universities have wireless access, some people discuss lectures via instant message or weblog as they happen."

"And that's a good thing? Don't students have a hard enough time paying attention to lectures? I was a student once; I know!"

I've certainly known it happen at many conferences. People will often look up the website of the speaker, try out their tools, look up their papers while they are speaking. A very good thing.

Of course others do spend lots of time checking their email, or doing other work. But this is the nature of the beast. At many conferences most delegates are not interested in all the talks, but you often do not know whether you are or not, till a couple of minutes in. So now the choice is between listening to something you are not interested in, or email. A improvement from when you could listen, or fall asleep....

Phil

MUD Xperience

[alephnull42]

In a former company (dot.com that went dot.boom) our tech department included a bunch of hackers (gee, whadda surprise) who had played a lot of MUDs during their college days.

Since we were spread out across several floors & buildings, we had a telnet chat server running, basically doing IM functionality.

We got into the habit of holding tech-only meetings via this server, with following benefits:

- Less waffle, it's harder to digress on a keyboard

- People actually thinking before "saying" something

- Instant meeting minutes (a GREAT bonus)

Unfortunately, this only works if ppl can actually type more than 5 words per minute, hence I don't forsee this reaching the mainstream anytime soon.

Only very few of the managers understood the benefits, the natural assumptions was geeks+network+server = "this can't be work, they must be playing"

did this

[f0rtytw0]

In one of my classes the professor would bring in a wireless access point so people with laptops could use them online during the class. She also brought in a few wireless cards that people could borrow. The point of doing this was to see how this affected the class. At the end of the semester she asked people who had been using laptops regularly what effect it had on them. I for one found it distracting at times since I would be browsing the web or chatting. But the nature of the class was to talk about current issues in the tech world and such so reading slashdot was kind of like doing classwork anyway =)

Laptops In Classrooms

[Thunderstruck]

At the University of South Dakota (USD, not in San Diego!) School of Law, most classrooms are outfitted with electrical outlets and network jacks at each seat. This enables even folks with weak batteries to make use of our laptops for note taking et. al. The most amazing adaptation this has caused, however, is not among the students but rather the professors.

Our faculty has in recent years discovered how to pace lectures by listening to the sound of keystrokes in the audience. If it gets too quiet they can talk more quickly, too much keyboard noise and it's time to pause.

Been There, Done That

[Anonymous Coward]

A comp sci class I was taking last year had wireless access, and the instructor was enthusiastic about students using laptops during lecture. Since all of her lectures were available in powerpoint, you could follow along on your laptop without having to strain to see the projection screen up front. Furthermore, she set up an AIM account so that you could ask her those "obvious" questions that people are often too embarassed to ask mid lecture, but are more comfortable asking with a degree of anonymity. It was funny, because sometimes she would briefly mention a concept that everyone pretended to understand, and you would hear the speakers on her laptop chime like crazy as about 30 new IM's flowed in. In my case, this greatly improved the quality of the lecture, and I learned quite a bit more than I would have with the standard paper and pencil, raise your hand approach. Granted, there was a fair degree of screwing off as some students found their computers to be more of an attractive nuisance than a study aid.

It seems that in the CS and EE classes that I take, the profs are pretty glad to see students taking an active role in the lectures rather than just sitting and obsorbing information. However in my general requirement classes (sociology, history, blah blah blah) I've found that instructors HATE the concept of deviating from the time-honored teaching methods. Pulling your laptop out in class seems to get the same reaction as if you pulled out an assault rifle.

Re:Been There, Done That

[fallingsilver]

A class I took briefly did something similar. Students could post questions on a messageboard during the class, which TAs could then answer. We could also rate the lecture (anonymously) as it proceeded, and when it reached a certain threshold, a bell would sound indicating to the lecturer that his lecture was a) supremely boring or b) supremely interesting. I found it quite a novel concept :)

He would also call on people in the class to answer questions, and did this by randomly pulling a name from the database of students, and displaying the name in huge letters on the massive projection screen at the front of the lecture hall. Slouching at the back of the room hoping to avoid being spotted and questioned? Completely ineffectual!

*lecture*?

[fantomas]

I've heard some fairly good arguments to suggest that the lecture itself is a mediaeval form of presenting information and is now out of date as a way of transforming knowledge. What do students gain by sitting listening to the great master spout his wisdom?

Several lecturers I know have moved to providing their "lecture" online (e.g. hypertext document) and use the allocated lecture time for a follow up workshop, requiring the students to have already read and considered the "lecture" and to come along with some sort of academic response. Seems a far more effective use of teaching time to me, far more likely to be of value to students.

Re:*lecture*?

[mark_lybarger]

reading the material to be presented on prior to the lecture isn't a new idea. classes have been doing it for ages.

what do students gain by listening to a lecture? they gain reinforcement of the crap they're going to be tested on. learning works best by seeing, hearing and doing. read the chapters, listen to the lectures, and do the lab work. it's amzaing how easy it is to pull off A's when that formula is followed.

Re:*lecture*?

[Jucius Maximus]

"Several lecturers I know have moved to providing their "lecture" online (e.g. hypertext document) and use the allocated lecture time for a follow up workshop, requiring the students to have already read and considered the "lecture" and to come along with some sort of academic response. Seems a far more effective use of teaching time to me, far more likely to be of value to students."

Agreed. I took a chemistry course like this several years ago. This course had reputation for being extremely difficult and you heard scary stories about it around the lunchroom table. The people who actually did the work before the lecture (including myself) did reasonably well (70-90%, and 80+ was a flippin' good mark for that class.) The people who fell behind on the readings were in a pit too deep to possibly climb out. They dropped, failed or barely squeaked by.

Of all the courses I have ever taken for anything, I think this chem one was the one where I learned the most. I liked the format because it really causes the information to stick in your head. Also, it weeds out the people who are not committed and really forces everyone else to actually learn. Four years later I was helping my brother learn the same stuff and I could correct or guide him on the material from memory because I remembered it.

Re: *lecture*?

[webguru4god]

I agree, it really depends on who is lecturing, and how engaging they want to be. I've had some professors who are really boring, and I have to try my hardest to concentrate and not fall asleep. But I have had a few professors who work hard to engage the class and pose thought provoking questions, while making the material entertaining. A specific example I remember is my Physics 1 professor coming wearing a rubber Einstein mask to lecture on relativity, complete with a fake German accent. The entire class paid attention during that lecture, and I think everyone got some useful information out of it as well.

Re:*lecture*?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is very personal. Others might think otherwise.

First about the "knowledge". Often as you say the material is available online or as course literature. With some reading instructions you can easily get the same amount of knowledge on your own. Maybe the lecturer can clarify one or two things but these occasions are rare at best (unfortunately). This isn't about the knowledge.

For me however these are the reasons for going to lectures:

1. Consistency
I _know_ I don't have the self disciplin to actually study enough on my own. Lectures give me regular times of studying and if I go to them all I know that I will at least have learnt something. Something I've been starting to experimenting with is to take my book along and actually read _at_ the lecture instead of listening. This has the advantage that I will get good use of my time and if the lecturer actually comes up with anything interesting I get to hear that as well.

2. Dialog
If there is something unclear I can take it up with the lecturer. You can do this on your own of course, the lecture just becomes a natural meeting point. To be honest, students of computer science seems to be terrified at the thought of asking questions (at least so the whole class hears), I often think that this comes from being insecure in what we actually know. And shyness of course. Or they are of the other sort of course, the ones that "knows" that they know everything there is to know. They never ask questions, instead they just have to have some irrelevant remark that shows just have good they are.

3. Social
I actually like to meet people. I wan't to be able to talk a bit in the break, not necessarily about school, or before and after the lecture. Study groups are often created this way which is great (once again this is something that computer students often seem to underestimate, perhaps because of the same reasons as above).

So, while lectures might not have the same information spreading purpose that they had once but they are still very important.

RIT IT Wifi Everywhere

[LogicX]

I attend Rochester Institute of Technology, in the Information Technology department.
Our entire building (three floors, just recently expanded) is covered with 802.11b connectivity. Many of the students, including myself bring laptops to class. Sure, some kids abuse them, and surf or play games during lecture (I've been known to do the former during a very boring Intro to System Administration 1 class), but there are some excellent uses.

I think the best is checking on something taught in class. More than once in that System Administration class the teacher has mentioned something, I doubted it, googled for it, and either learned it to be true (there was a use for the sticky bit to keep programs memory resident, but in current linux the sticky bit's purpose has changed), or false (Windows 2K does NOT require NTFS to do software RAID -- you can use FAT just as easily). This is an excellent way to reinforce information being taught. Had I not had my laptop in class I would've gotten sidetracked, forgotten about it, and never learned the truth about these and other things.

In another class I took, Network Administration, the teacher, Bill Stackpole, would often take advantage of those in class with laptops. If he brought up a topic and wasn't sure about something he mentioned, he'd encourage those of us with laptops to research it quickly, and let the class know the correct technical data. If a student would ask him a question in class that he couldn't answer, he'd encourage anyone with a laptop to help out and find the answer. From even those few excellent uses of wireless connectivity in the classroom I feel its been a great addition to the technology classes at RIT. If someone is going to goof off using a laptop, then they are the same person who was going to goof off doodling in their notebook, nothing lost, nothing gained.
I could go on and on about the times the Wifi access has saved my ass in one way or another in the GCCIS building. (and maybe I will later) Come out of the wood-work RIT students -- I know you have more stories!

Tutorials in the Humanities

[Vagary]

That's been part of the teaching style of the humanities for a long time now: go read this paper or book by some smart dead dude (readings), then I'll tell you what I think about it (lecture), then we can discuss (tutorial).

It's pretty obvious that a lecture can be converted to a meta-reading and put online, but the big question right now is whether tutorials can also be as effective online. Of course, never underestimate a university student's desire to be passive: many would rather snooze through a two-hour lecture than spend that time reading. And tutorials at anything below an advanced level are pretty dismal, at least at my alma matter: two students team up with the professor to mock the one student who will actually voice a minority opinion, while the rest snooze.

If the Internet can fix any of this, I'm all for it.

Re:Old fashioned name for this practice:

[Anonymous Coward]

The way you deal with that is those instructor evaluations at the end of the term. Or speak with the dean of your college. And if that doesn't work, and it's important to you, you transfer. You're the one paying money for an education.

And if the prof is so useless that he does petty things to make you attend his lectures, I can imagine how well he takes to students tapping on laptops during them.

~~~

Taking Notes

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of my friends at Caltech and I all have Powerbooks and we have found it very useful to take our notes together in Hydra. It's really nice because it allows each of us to concentrate on some of the things the prof says so we can get notes that are more comeplete and in better detail. The other plus to using Hydra is that it doesn't matter if we have internet access or not because we can just form an ad hoc network.

Our whole education process/system is antiquated

[Sodade]

The reality is that technology will cange the way we learn stuff. The problem is that there are so many people entrenched (dependant) on the old way that the paridigm shift will be fought tooth and nail. Physically going to a classroom (school at all for that matter) is a waste of time and money for students. If someone built a colaborative learning tool (or used one of the many available tools) I'm confiden that we could develop an educational system that would develop knowledge much more efficiently.
Someone should earn some karma by providing some googles on the following:

1. open source collaborative education tools
2. virtual universities that push the technical envelope
The other issue is that our current educational system does not teach people the skills they need to survive in the business world. It seems based on an idealistic view of creating well rounded "renaissance" minds, which is neat and all, but seems like a rich kid luxury to me. When I realized this I blew off school and focused on making money and never looked back. When I am retired, I will go to school to learn cool stuff because it is fun.
I think that we need more "trade" oriented schooling for kids filled with classes like: powerpoint 102: how to impress the PHB without doing any tangible work

The Laptop Dilemna

[MacGod]

I used to use a laptop in class, but found it ultimately more trouble than it was worth. It worked fine for the English elective (waste of time) or the History of Science courses I took, but not for my core Math & Science classes.

Basically, by the time you copy out a diagram or complex formula, it will take you so long (especially if you have to switch to Symbol to make half the characters), that it's simply not worth it.

Now, some profs distribute their lectures in PDFs/Word Documents/HTML files, which makes it much easier, but then many students just download the lecture notes and skip class, which professors tend to hate.

I think a great solution would be for all students to have wireless laptops, and have the prof stream the lecture to students as he goes. That way, there's an incentive to go to class still, and laptops become a worthwile tool.

I'm thinking along the lines of a custom program that feeds one page at a time into a PDF or something.

Alternately, documents with blanks spots to be filled in during the lecture can also work.

Or, finally, something like the Mimio would also be very cool.

Re:The Laptop Dilemna

[lakmiseiru]

MIT has gotten around the problem of student non-attendance, at least with course 6.001 (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs).

The course (at least, according to a recent symposium lecture by its professors) is entirely computerized... students download recorded lectures each week (somewhat like a distance learning program), and the professor(s) can keep track of who downloads what. The course also has online problem sets and exercises. A few lectures are still offered in the traditional format (i.e. in the lecture hall), but the rest of the course is computerized.

I'm not sure how I feel about this... I like the professors' readiness to use technology (one would hope that would occur, considering which course it is!), but I can see how many students would benefit from a traditional lecture format.

We'll see where this goes, I guess.

Possible problems...

[Gandalf_Greyhame]

Lectures are an archaic form of teaching. Having a person preaching about how things are to be done is an inefficient way of learning, can be quite boring, and is VERY difficult to take. I say this after 3 and a half years at university.

I have had a few different lecturers over the past three and a half years, some I remember fondly, others I remember in pain. I have suffered through hours of lecturers from people who I cannot understand (that was not intended to be racist, and anyone who takes it that way is a moron) I just cannot understand what they are saying due to their accents... it makes it very difficult to learn.

One of my favourite lecturers, teaches by making the students THINK. This is a practice that is uncommon in the university world. A student is more likely to pay attention and learn if they are involved in the lecture. He would tell stories from industry, teach the course material, and then in the lecture would ask the students questions. What a novel idea... why don't more lecturers follow his example? I can tell you all with absolute honesty, that I have retained far more knowledge from his classes than from all of the other classes combined. He has found a way to make his material interesting to the students. This encourages them to learn... to think... many lecturers just expect you to absorb the information, and then spew it all back to them verbatim. Thought appears to be disencouraged.

I must apologise now for the seeming randomness of thought there. I feel rather strongly about this, and can get a little excited and begin to ramble.

Re:Laptops unnecessary

[grendel_x86]

I wonder if the tablets would be any better.

When i was in a real school, i used to use a combo of notes(paper& pen) and typed. I only used the notes for things i couldnt do in vi, like pics, etc. And since it was a lot of code, it just made sense.

The big reason the computer helped is that i could search through them insted of skimming my aweful handwriting.

I think the tablet would come in useful as you could do those drawings where needed, type where needed, etc. I know there is no handwriting recognition software on earth that could decipher my chicken scratch, but it would have negated my need to waste paper.

I do agree that most people will just use them to play games, and have had profs make people turn off the monitors while class was going on because the clacking was annoying, and people wernt paying attention(which drags everyone down). Maybe in class there could be wireless that isnt open to the outside world, so im and browsing could be cut off at the will of the instructor. But that gets into other issues. Just a thought. Might try the tablet when i go back for more degrees.

I'm a college student...

[manduwok]

...and I just finished my first semester of "online" learning. I am 3/4 of the way through my Bachelor's in Comp/Info Science, and just wrapped up my mid-spring semester. I took two classes that were completely online because I now have an awesome full-time IT job. Granted, I did well, but Internet classes take much more discipline than the "traditional" lecture and/or lab; plus, there is something to be said for the classroom environment - no matter how we try to emulate it via technology, nothing can take its place. I am all for incorporating instant messaging, chats, etc. into the classroom, but in my opinion, there is no substitute.

Re:Distracting - The age-old question ...

[hawkeyeMI]

I'm wicked fast at LaTeX and take all my engineering notes in it. They come out as beautiful, book-quality PDF documents when I'm done. Worth it to me because I can type nearly twice as fast as I write, and can actually read it afterward. The only disadvantage is for diagrams, which I usually describe in words rather than drawing...

Any lecturer who bans this

[Snowspinner]

Any lecturer who bans this is hopelessly mired in one given way of doing things, and is one of all too many unfortunate parts of the academic profession.

If I could actually guarantee that all my students would have computers in a lecture, the number of new things I could do with a lecture would be mind-blowing. First of all, I would immediately set up a chat room for the lecture to go on while the lecture is taking place. I'd have a computer in that room as well, both for sending out supplementary material (Weblinks in place of handouts) and for reading over the conversation when I'm done.

Will people have useless discussions on the side, surf the internet randomly, and/or play Quake?

Without a doubt. However, it's not as though someone really hell-bent on not paying attention needs anything more than a notebook. Or the ability to close their eyes.

Re:Not a big deal

[gartogg]

As I sit in my Intro to macro-Economics class...

Actually, this class isn't mandatory attendance, but I want to hear the lecture. Not all of the 3 hour lecture, but being in the class Mudding is an occupation that allows me just enough leeway that when the professor comes to a subject that I don't already know, or would like clarification on, I can ask about it.

This is a suprisingly good idea, since the material that is being presented at _________(college name left blank so as not to offend) is not really at the level that a normally intelligent person should have to pay more than minimal attention. The downside is that there are only 3 ppl with laptops in class, and no easy to use network protocol for chatting in class, so very little class work gets done.

Another benefit is that I can look up subjects and read about them while ignoring questions that are being asked for the 2nd and 3rd times.

Basically, for any class where you can't use a calculator (soft sciences, arts, etc.) I think a laptop is a good idea, just in case you decide to stay for the lecture.