Enhancing “Frontchannel” Discussions with a Digital “Backchannel”

(Originally titled “Digital Backchannels”)

In this Educational Leadership article, Jeffrey Carpenter (Elon University) says that as a young teacher, he believed whole-class conversations with his high-school students went well. “A few extroverted or extra-motivated students could be counted on to contribute,” he remembers, “and discussions would pass by pleasantly enough. A decent quantity and quality of ideas were shared, and awkward silences were rare.” 

But over time, Carpenter realized that only a handful of students were taking part while the majority tuned out or engaged in an illicit “backchannel”– whispering, note-passing, flirting. “When teachers ask, ‘Any questions?’” he says, “they often encounter silence, even though the questions are lurking out there.” 

The solution? Allowing students to use mobile devices to create a legitimate “backchannel” that engages all students in the discussion. “In the backchannel,” says Carpenter, “students can offer opinions, answer questions, analyze frontchannel content, or share supplementary information.” Here are four scenarios:

• Collaborative conversations – A U.S. history teacher asks what students found confusing in their Civil War homework. Several students speak while others use the class’s Todaysmeet.com chat room to chime in. The teacher skims the backchannel content, sees confusion about the economic differences between the North and South, and verbally clarifies the point. 

• Parallel discussions – A small group of 9^th-graders debates who was to blame for the tragedy in Romeo and Juliet, while students in a fishbowl use digital devices to summarize, comment on, and add to the conversation. The teacher monitors frontchannel and backchannel discussions, and when there’s a lull says, “I see here in the doc that Kaitlyn thinks that if Friar Lawrence hadn’t gotten involved, then nothing would have happened. Any thoughts on that?” A student blurts out, “But he had good intentions!” and both channels light up. 

• Interactive notes – Eighth-grade science students conduct a lab on using citrus fruits to build batteries; they tweet their predictions, questions, or pictures of collected data on the class-specific hashtag. “Will the size of the fruit matter?” asks one student. “Some fruits will be better batteries than others,” tweets another. After a few minutes, the teacher displays all the tweets and leads a frontchannel discussion while students continue to tweet their suggestions.

• Formative assessment – Toward the end of a world-history class on the spread of global capitalism, the teacher asks students to summarize the day’s most-important idea in Socrative, then displays responses and invites students to vote on the best. This sparks further discussion, and the teacher makes a mental note to clarify a misconception in the next lesson and create a Do Now on labor unions.

Carpenter believes digital backchannels can involve far more students, enhance student-to-student interaction, and improve the breadth and depth of discussions. He offers these suggestions:

• Make sure all students have access to devices (sometimes working in pairs).
• Establish norms for helpful and unhelpful backchannel comments.
• Monitor the backchannel and keep comments focused on the topic.
• Have agreed-upon “devices off” signals to return to an all-class discussion. 

“Digital Backchannels” by Jeffrey Carpenter in Educational Leadership, May 2015 (Vol. 72, #8, p. 54-58), available for ASCD members and for purchase at http://bit.ly/1AtypwC; Carpenter can be reached at jcarpenter13@elon.edu.

From the Marshall Memo #588