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

[jandrese]

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

Re:Somebody get to work

[slulovic]

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.

Re:Somebody get to work

[Jucius Maximus]

"Maybe the students wouldn't have so many questions if they actually listened and instead of posting questions and rating others."

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.

Google link (no reg)

[Patik]

Link

Wow - studenst discuss what's happening in class..

[Registered Coward v2]

Not that anuone ever thought of pasing a note around in class, back in the pre-IM dark ages.

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.

Hope they dont get that at my university...

[acehole]

The keystrokes from students using IM clients or blogging would keep me awake in lectures.

It's already enough I have to put up with that strange guy at the front talking loudly about stuff... sheesh.

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 :-)

Passing notes?

[Lane.exe]

Isn't this just like passing notes?

[annoying IM noise]

"Are you passing notes, Mr. Smith? Forward that to me so I can read it out loud to the class... hmmm... a slash s slash l slash pick wan two cyber? What is this crap?"

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.

Distracting

[DrWho520]

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.

Giving students too much credit

[hoggoth]

Everyone is talking about how back-channel discussions will allow students to discuss the lecture in real-time, refining their questions and improving their understanding....

Come on!

Has it been THAT long since you've been in school?!

Here's a typical back-channel discussion:

"Heh heh the professor said BUTT"
"No, he said BUT, moron"
"Check out the rack on the girl in the third row on the right"
"Sweeeeeet"
"Yo, that guy with the stupid hair fell asleep. HAHAHA look he's drooling on his desk!"
"HAHAH! Thats awesome! Hey is anybody on this channel near that guy? Throw something at him"
"Yeah I'm behind him. Watch this." ...
"HAHAHA"
"Hee Hee Hee Hee"
"Score!"
"Yeah! ROTFL!!!"

Best of Both Worlds

[notcreative]

Either way, some people consider the practice rude, others consider it progress, and good arguments can be made on either side.

And there are some people who consider progress in general to be rude.

Back-channeling Shirley MacLaine

[hoggoth]

Dude, the other day I was like back-channeling in this new-age general education requirement class when HOLY SHIT Shirley MacLaine starting typing through my fingers. I was back-channeling channeling. It was like, woah.

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"

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.

not like it used to be

[D0wnsp0ut]

I remember, back in the day, when we would sit in the back row and sleep.

Kids these days...where are their priorities?!

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*?

[gidds]

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.

IM == distraction

[jvarsoke]

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

Laptops unnecessary

[TwistedGreen]

...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.

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!

Re:What it means...

[bcrowell]

what it means is that the instructor isn't doing a good enough job discussing it himself, or isn't keeping the environment open enough to encourage open discussion in the class.
I'm a teacher, and I think you're exactly right about what this says about openness to questions. A couple of things you notice as a teacher:

• Even if you encourage it, students are usually very shy about asking questions, because they're afraid they'll look stupid.
• Often a student will rush the podium immediately after class is over, point to the blackboard, and say, "where you wrote 2+2=5, did you really mean 4?" In other words, it often happens that everyone in the class is aching to ask the same question, but they all think they're the only ones who are confused.

I can also see how the appropriateness of this kind of thing could depend on the situation:

• At the community college where I teach, the typical number of students who bring laptops to a class is 0, with rare statistical fluctuations going as high as 1. If that 1 is IMing, I guarantee it's not about the class :-) Maybe this could be more appropriate at a business meeting where everyone has a laptop.
• I teach mostly small classes (15-35 students), so I don't see what the problem is with just raising your hand. But if you're in the horrible situation of teaching one of those ridiculous 300-person lectures, I guess that might not be practical. To me, however, that just begs the question of what is the purpose of a 300-person lecture. Is anybody under the illusion that there's really any learning going on in that kind of class? Why not just watch it on video, or read the textbook? Why doesn't the prof just distribute her PowerPoint file, or type up lecture notes that everyone can discuss online?
• It's goofy that the prof is the only one who doesn't know what's being said. If she's made a mistake or said something unclear or confusing, shouldn't she be alerted so she can clarify? What this really points to is the need for a more appropriate way to use the technology.
• The keyboard noise is a real issue. Not only is is distracting as noise per se, but most of the other students are probably assuming (and probably correctly) that the student is websurfing or playing a game. (Again, it might be different in a huge auditorium, where the prof is speaking into a mike.)

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:Distracting - The age-old question ...

[fshalor]

It really depends entirely on the method of delivery. I've had a few classes with an outstanding professore here who makes every effort to tailor his lectures to the students he's teaching. He has won several awards for his methods of pedagogy (sp). Like anything else, the addition of laptops to the classroom is a tool which can be abused, misuesd, or manage to become very benificial.

If implimented correctly, all that clickety-tatp-tap-tappety could be no more distracting then the sound of pens scratching across the paper and calculator buttons being jammed to the contact pad.

I still can't shake the image I have of the first laptop I saw in a class... The guy was looking at porno on the second row of a C programming class on his new dell. After a little while, and due to several laughs from those behind him, the professor came over and walked up behind him.

After that, the embarresd student was given the task of being the note monkey at the front of the class for the slides. The proff never let him live it down. I don't think that kid will ever look at porno again without remembering the look on the professors face. :)

No, the kid was not me...