May 13, 2011 Speaking Up in Class, Silently, via Social Media
Wasn’t it just the other day that teachers confiscated cellphones and principals warned about oversharing on MySpace?
A discussion on Today’s Meet from Erin Olson’s English Class in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, about a poem called “To the L
Now, Erin Olson, an English teacher in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, is among a small but growing cadre of educators trying to exploit Twitter-like technology to enhance classroom discussion. On Friday, as some of her 11th graders read aloud from a poem called “To the Lady,” which ponders why bystanders do not intervene to stop injustice, others kept up a running commentary on their laptops.
The poet “says that people cried out and tried but nothing was done,” one student typed. Another offered, “She is giving raw proof … that we are slaves to our society.”
Instead of being a distraction — an electronic version of note-passing — the chatter echoed and fed into the main discourse, said Mrs. Olson, who monitored the stream and tried to absorb it into the lesson. She and others say that social media, once barricaded outside the school door, can entice students who rarely raise a hand to express themselves through a medium they find as natural as breathing.
“When we have class discussions, I don’t really feel the need to speak up or anything,” said one of her students, Justin Lansink, 17. “When you type something down, it’s a lot easier to say what I feel.”
With Twitter and other free microblogging platforms, teachers from elementary schools to universities are setting up what is known as a “backchannel” in their classes. The real-time digital streams allow students to comment, pose questions (answered either by one another or the teacher) and shed inhibitions about voicing opinions. Perhaps most importantly, if they are texting on-task, they are less likely to be texting about something else.
Nicholas Provenzano, an English teacher at Grosse Pointe South High School, outside Detroit, said that in a class of 30, only about 12 usually carried the conversation, but that eight more might pipe up on a backchannel. “Another eight kids entering a discussion is huge,” he noted.
Skeptics — and at this stage they far outnumber enthusiasts — fear that introducing backchannels into classrooms will distract students and teachers, and lead to off-topic, inappropriate or even bullying remarks. A national survey released last month found that 2 percent of college faculty members had used Twitter in class, and nearly half thought that doing so would negatively affect learning. When Derek Bruff, a math lecturer and assistant director of the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University, suggests that fellow professors try backchannels, “Most look at me like I’m coming from another planet,” he said.
“The word on the street about laptops in class,” Dr. Bruff added, is that students use them to tune out, checking e-mail or shopping for shoes. He acknowledged that often happens, but argued that professors could reduce such activity by giving students something class-related to do on their mobile devices, which are ubiquitous and not going away.
Besides Twitter, teachers have turned to other platforms for backchannels, some with more structure and privacy. Most are free on the Web and — so far — free of advertising. Google Moderator lets a class type questions and vote for the ones they would most like answered. Today’s Meet, the platform used by Mrs. Olson, sets up a virtual “room” and does not require users to be on Twitter.
Purdue University, in Indiana, developed its own backchannel system, called Hot Seat, for use in all classrooms two years ago, at a cost of $84,000. Hot Seat lets students post comments and questions, which can be read on laptops or smartphones or projected on a large screen. Sugato Chakravarty, who lectures about personal finance to crowds of 400, pauses every 10 minutes to answer those that have been “voted up” by his audience.
Before Hot Seat, “I could never get people to speak up,” Professor Chakravarty said. “Everybody’s intimidated.”
“It’s clear to me,” he added, “that absent this kind of social media interaction, there are things students think about that normally they’d never say.”
But the technology has been slow to win over faculty. It was used in just 12 courses this spring. Sandra Sydnor-Bousso, a professor of hospitality and tourism management, said Hot Seat did not mesh well with her style of walking around class to encourage a dialogue. She also fears that requiring students to bring wireless devices to class would increase the already high rate of social e-mailing and checking of Facebook.
“The last thing I want to do is to give them yet another way to distract themselves,” she said.
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