Enhancing the Digital Backchannel Backstage on the Basis of a Formative User Study

Contemporary higher education with its large audiences suffers from passivity of students. Enhancing the classroom with a digital backchannel can contribute to establishing and fostering active participation of and collaboration among students in the lecture. Therefore, we conceived the digital backchannel Backstage specifically tailored for the use in large classes. At an early phase of development we tested its core functionalities in a small-scale user study. The aim of the study was to gain first impressions of its adoption, and also to form a basis for further steps in the conception of Backstage. Regarding adoption we particularly focused on how Backstage influences the participants' questioning behavior, a salient aspect in learning. We observed that during the study much more questions were uttered on Backstage than being asked without backchannel support. Regarding the further development of Backstage we capitalized on the participants' usability feedback. The key of the refinement is the integration of presentation slides in Backstage, which leads to an interesting reconsideration of the user interactions of Backstage

Chat It Up: Backchanneling to Promote Reflective Practice Among In-Service Teachers

In a graduate education course geared toward developing reflective teaching practice in in-service teachers, backchannels, in the form of chat rooms, were employed in small groups to facilitate peer feedback during viewings of video recorded instruction. This study examined the nature and quality of peer feedback exchanged in the digital medium and gauged graduate students’ impressions of the technology, with potential for carryover into their professional practices in P-12 instruction. Results revealed that the backchannel was perceived as an easy-to-use tool that promoted rich, real-time, high-quality feedback and a space to collaborate and exchange ideas, while improving engagement. Backchannel comments had mostly positive or neutral tone, and took the form of observations, compliments, and helpful coaching prompts. Comments were overwhelmingly focused on instructional strategies, teacher behavior, and the learning environment. Participants saw value in utilizing backchannels in P-12 settings, but some expressed hesitation in using such tools with young students

Writing on the wall:How the use of technology can open dialogical spaces in lectures

This article discusses experiences using an online collaborative whiteboard to provide dialogical spaces (Wegerif, 2013) for students to reflect on their understanding of concepts in lectures in two higher-education courses: one in psychology and the other in teacher education. When describing dialogical spaces, the following terms are crucial: opening (how the dialogical space is enabled), widening (how many different voices and perspectives it allows for) and deepening (the extent of critical reflections that it provides). The research question is: ‘What kind of affordances are there in using a collaborative whiteboard to support the dimensions of opening, widening and deepening dialogical spaces in lectures?’ Audio recordings of peer discussions, material produced in lectures, focus-group interviews with students and course evaluations from teachers are used to examine the activities through the analytical lenses of opening, widening and deepening dialogical spaces. The focus is on how creative knowledge processes are stimulated through dialogue. Based on the two cases, we argue that opening dialogical spaces provides students with rich possibilities to reflect on concepts and develop arguments, thereby providing feedback on students’ understanding of course content. Students bring a range of perspectives and experiences to the scene, thereby widening such spaces. For lecturers, the critical point was to deepen the spaces and orchestrate a dialogue with students. We found the concept of a dialogical space to be fruitful for planning and assessing discussion-based activities in the context of the lecture format.publishedVersio

The Use of a Digital Question Board to Facilitate Student Questioning and Engagement in Large Lecture Classes: A Mixed-Methods Study

A lack of student questioning and engagement is faced by many universities, where a large lecture is a common practice. Emerging technologies bring about possibilities to fill this gap. This study applied constructivist learning theories and used a digital canvas as a Digital Question Board (DQB) for students to freely pose questions and respond using mobile technology. A mixed-methods study with a quasi-experiment was conducted to investigate the following research questions (RQs): (1) Do students demonstrate different questioning behaviors when provided access to a DQB from those students who are not provided with access to a DQB in large lecture classes? and (2) How does having access to a DQB during large lecture classes influence students’ level of engagement? The study was conducted in two groups of an introductory research methodology course in a large comprehensive university in eastern China (n = 253). The pre-post quasi-experiment lasted six weeks. The data from surveys, interviews, observation, and online posts (log data) were collected and analyzed. The results revealed that when the instructor discussed student questions after every 20–30 minutes in large lecture classes, students with DQB access had a significantly higher frequency of questioning than those without a DQB. The presence of the DQB enriched the types of questions and responses and encouraged mostly on-task learning questions. Having DQB access also greatly improved students’ behavioral and cognitive engagement and facilitated emotional engagement. With technology, students employed a non-linear, constructivist questioning process and actively contributed to the co-construction of knowledge. The presence of the DQB reduced the social pressure of questioning in large lecture classes. This research might contribute to the educational practices and theories as it depicted the patterns of student questioning in technology-mediated large lecture classes, proposed how to design constructivist instructional strategies better to encourage all students to freely pose questions and receive feedback without fear of embarrassment and being judged