This document discusses using backchannels to give more students a voice in the classroom. It presents several backchannel tools like Todaysmeet.com, Twitter, Backchannelchat.com, and Socrative that allow students to participate and share thoughts online alongside in-person lessons. Backchannels can help teachers get feedback on student understanding to adjust lessons in real-time. Examples are given of how different tools could facilitate backchannel discussions for activities like opening lessons, seminars, and labs. The document encourages using various backchannel tools for different purposes to increase student participation.

1. The Back Channel: Giving All
Students a Voice
Dr. Jeff Carpenter - Elon University
@doccarpenter
– March 9-12, 2015
This presentation available @ http://bit.ly//sxswbackchannel
Bored? Go to: http://todaysmeet.com/sxswbackchannel
and sign in!

2. Experiential Session = Take out /
turn on your technology!
1. Go to todaysmeet.com/sxswbackchannel and sign in
2. Who am I?
3. Why am I here?
4. Who are you? Raise your hand, and/or type your answer.
5. Why are you here? Raise your hand, and/or type your answer.
6. What percentage of people is likely to answer aloud a question like #5?
7. Should I tailor this session to the needs of the people who would answer
question #5 aloud?
This presentation available @ http://bit.ly/sxswbackchannel

3. A Problem
⬜ Teacher often don’t know enough about what their students
are thinking.
⬜ What are their questions?
⬜ What are their ideas?
⬜ What are they confident they understand?
⬜ What are they finding most challenging?
⬜ What do they think of each others’ ideas?
⬜ Because of this lack of access to student thinking, teachers do not
receive enough timely feedback on their teaching.
⬜ Why is this the case? Raise your hand, and/or type your
answer.

6. The Problem - Part B
- Students do not have enough different
ways to participate, and share what they
are thinking

7. A possible solution?
⬜“backchannel” - a real-time online
conversation that takes place alongside live
spoken remarks
⬜many technologies can support this
⬜Why and/or how would having a
backchannel help address the problem of
access to student thinking?

8. A story - Elaine

9. Backchannels provide opportunities for:
⬜ more students to voice their thoughts, opinions, questions, etc.
⬜ different kinds of students - shy students, deliberators, students w/
autism, etc. – to “speak” up.
⬜ development of academic identities among students who face
educational, economic, social, cultural, or other obstacles.
⬜ students to seek help, admit struggles in a way that may be less
embarrassing.
⬜ peers to assist each other.
⬜ teachers to receive more information about students’ learning or
misunderstandings, & adjust instruction accordingly

10. Backchannel Examples - opening a lesson
⬜ What did you find difficult or confusing about last night’s homework?
⬜ Teacher addresses one or two initial comments from volunteers in the frontchannel.
⬜ Remaining students backchannel by each adding a point of confusion to a
Todaysmeet.com chat room.
⬜ Peers encouraged to answer questions in the backchannel if they can do so.
⬜ Teacher skims the Todaysmeet.com chatter to identify common areas of confusion to
address, and/or challenges students to find themes that run across posts.

11. Backchannel Examples - seminars
⬜ “Fishbowl” discussion, an inner circle analyzes aloud a reading or topic.
⬜ Outer circle summarizes, comments, & adds to the discussion in Google doc.
⬜ Teacher brings in ideas from the Google doc’s backchannel conversation to
enrich inner circle discussion.
⬜ Students switch places halfway through activity to develop communication skills
in both mediums.
⬜ Google doc is record of seminar conversation which allows for reflection (student
&/ teacher), assessment (student, peer, teacher), absent students to catch up.

12. TodaysMeet.com
⬜ Create and name a room
⬜ Users sign in
⬜ Transcript option
⬜ Strength: KISS

13. Twitter
⬜ Use class hashtag (and maybe a tweet aggregator
like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite) – e.g., #edu355 – to
create a backchannel space
⬜ What would advantages or disadvantages of
backchannel via Twitter be? Raise your hand, and/or
type your answer
⬜ Demo – Do I have enough tweeps? use #sxsw15bc
⬜ What is a concern you have about using
backchanneling in your classroom?

14. ⬜ Go to http://bit.ly/sxswbc, sign in
⬜ What is one way you think you could use back
channeling in your classroom?
⬜ Helpful teacher controls:
⬜ Option for public anonymity, private
accountability
⬜ Delete posts
⬜ Pin posts to top of feed
Backchannelchat.com

15. ⬜ Familiarity?
⬜ Similar to Polleverywhere, but created by and for
educators
⬜ Creates classroom (#) where questions asked &
answered
⬜ Allows for students to vote on peers’ answers
⬜ m.socrative.com - room # 533190
⬜ Demo (next slide)
Socrative

16. Socrative
⬜ Which of the backchannel tools do you think you are most
likely to use?
A. Todaysmeet.com
B. Twitter
C. Backchannelchat.com
D. Socrative

17. More examples of backchannel activities
⬜ Halfway through lab activity, students stop work to send tweets w/ class specific hashtag
(#), that include predictions, questions, or pictures of collected data. Teacher displays
tweets & discussion of their content ensues in the frontchannel and via additional tweets.
⬜ Near lesson’s end, students summarize their understanding of most important idea from
day’s content in a post using Socrative. Once students have submitted summaries, they
can see peers’ responses as well, & are able to vote on which summary is best. Class
closes with brief frontchannel discussion of similarities and differences in summaries.

18. Change the scenario
⬜ Question becomes: which of the backchannel tools do you
think you are most likely to use, and why?
⬜ Which backchannel tool would be best for this type of
question?
⬜ Benefits to using one backchanneling tool, but also to use of
different tools for different purposes

19. Questions? Comments?
⬜ Edmodo, Gaggle, Polleverywhere can support backchanneling
⬜ Ask questions & make comments in the
todaysmeet.com/sxswbackchannel