Okay, so “Classrooms Go High-Tech to Engage Students” isn’t the most creative headline, but it was nice to see some coverage of educational technologies of interest to me in US News & World Reports recently.  One theme of the article is that students are going to use technology during class, so instructors might as well put that technology to good use.  Another theme is captured by this quote:

Professors are not so much people who stand and spout facts with students taking notes, said [Glenn Platt, professor of interactive media studies at Miami University]. The Internet has all of the information. And students aren’t going to come to class for a lecture if it’s on a podcast.  So that means many instructors are trying to make the classroom more interactive.

Each theme seems a bit of a downer: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” and “Kids these days!” (shakes fist like the neighbor in the Dennis the Menace comics).  I’m exaggerating, of course, but I think it’s worth pointing out that many instructors who use technology in the classroom aren’t catering to students.  Many are excited to find ways to create more interactive, dynamic, engaging classrooms.  Students learn best when they are actively engaged in the learning process.  Some students can be so engaged during a classic college lecture, but many don’t learn best that way.  (It’s worth noting that many of those who do learn well that way go on to careers like, say, college professors, so relying on our personal learning experiences to determine our teaching practices can be a bit misleading.)

Here’s another kind of “Kids these days!” quote:

“Technology is such an inherent part of their lives,” [Gary Rudman, GTR Consulting,] said. “They have come to expect it every step of the way. When they come to college, they are expecting this technology to be incorporated into their learning.”

I’ll have to take Mr. Rudman at his word, since he’s doing research on this topic.  I would argue that at least some students don’t expect technology to be used in interactive ways in the classroom.  Some students are expecting to come to class, listen and take notes, make sense of their notes after class, then write some version of their notes on the test.  Having students actively engage with each other during class (via clicker questions, Twitter backchannel, and so on) can throw some students off.  Most of them, however, come around to like a more interactive classroom.

I should also mention something I’ve many times from those who have had a while to think about Mark Prensky’s “digital native” idea: Students are quite used to using technology in their daily lives, but are often not used to using technology to learn.  They’re also not used to thinking critically about how they use technology.  (And, yes, I’m providing my own version of “Kids these days!” here…)

A few other highlights from the US News article include a brief description of the in-class backchannel used by Scott McLeod, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Iowa State; a mention of Livescribe Inc.’s Pulse smartpen, one device I’d like to get to know better; a brief update on the state of e-textbooks; and one student’s tough time with blogging for her classes:

Chelsea Nuffer, 21, a performance and communications major at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., said blogging for four classes was overwhelming and she ran out of things to write about. “It works for students who might not speak up in class,” she said. “For me, I’m pretty vocal.”

When the communications majors start complaining about having too much blogging, then you know that student blogging has gone mainstream!

Clay Shirky’s recent TED talk on social media has some interesting implications for future classroom dynamics.  As you watch Shirky’s 17-minute talk (embedded below), think about translating his ideas to educational settings.

Here’s the slide that stood out to me:

This is Shirky’s visualization of the 20th century model of getting one’s message out.  One producer, one message (regardless of recipient), high cost of distribution.  Doesn’t this model look like the one-to-many model used in a lot of college teaching?

Here’s the new model from Shirky:

This is the 21st century model powered by social media.  Everyone becomes a potential producer, multiple messages are produced that are more relevant to their receipients, and distribution is cheap and (relatively) easy.

Shirky gives the example of the community on MyBarackObama.com during the US election last year.  Millions of Obama’s supporters contributed to the discussions on this site, sometimes collaborating to express disapproval of Obama’s decisions.  Shirky says, “[The Obama campaign] had understood that their role with MyBarackObama.com was to convene their supporters, not to control their supporters.”

Might our classrooms look more like this, with every student contributing to the shared learning experience?  What if the teacher’s role was not to control the students’ learning, but to convene a learning opportunity for the students, one that leverages the many possible connections between and among students?

Shirky ends his talk with this: “Media is less and less often about crafting a single message to be consumed by individuals and more and more often a way of creating an environment for convening and supporting groups…  The question we all face now is, How can we make best use of these media even thought it means changing the way we’ve always done it?”

Given the ways that social media are changing how we communicate outside of the classroom, I think it makes sense to explore the ways that social media–and classroom response systems, broadly defined–might change the dynamics of learning inside the classroom, too.

Chris Iufer of Duarte Design posted a great blog entry earlier this week on using free-response audience feedback during a presentation by Nancy Duarte at the Web 2.0 Expo.  Chris describes the process he used to determine how to collect and display this feedback.  He first enlisted his colleagues to help him think about the potential audience for this presentation, then applied the results of that activity to decisions regarding the use Twitter, Poll Everywhere, and the Meebo chat room service.

I follow the Duarte Design blog because I was impressed with what I’ve seen of Nancy Duarte’s book on presentations, slide:ology.  (Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen is another great book on designing and delivering presentations.)  As you might imagine, my interest in classroom response systems has led to an interest in effective presenting, which in turn has led to an interest in visual explanations (e.g., the great “In Plain English” videos produced by Common Craft), visual thinking (e.g., the organization VizThink and Dan Roam’s book The Back of the Napkin), and even graphic facilitation (e.g., Peter Durand’s Center for Graphic Facilitation blog).

I find it exciting when some of my varied interests overlap.  For instance, when Garr (Presentation Zen) Reynolds blogged about the comic book created by Scott McCloud that Google used to explain its new Web browser Chrome, I found my worlds colliding.  I’ve followed Scott McCloud’s work since reading his book Understanding Comics years ago, thanks to my interest in comic books in high school, and I’ve come to appreciate his ability to explain complex ideas in words and pictures (that is, using comics).  Putting comics, visual explanations, and Web technology all in one blog post made for an interesting read for me, to say the least.

Back to Chris Iufer’s post about audience feedback.  He ended up using the Meebo service, which worked well for him.  (I think Poll Everywhere would have done the job well, too, had he used the free-text response option.)  He asked in his post, “Have you ever participated in a live poll during a presentation? What was your experience like? Is this something you would do in one of your presentations?”

His questions remind me that some of the challenges and opportunites we see in using classroom response systems in the world of higher ed are becoming relevant to other domains, including the domain of professional presentations that Duarte Design knows well.  Here’s another domain: I know of a couple of churches that have experimented with Poll Everywhere for audience feedback during their pastor’s sermons.  I hope that our worlds will collide a little more often in the future so that those of us in these various arenas can learn from each other.

In my last post, I noted that students at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, used clickers to answer polling questions before and after they watched the recent presidential debate.  I heard from Barb DeSanto, chair of the Mass Media Department at Washburn, who organized the clicker portion of the debate viewing.  She let me know that they’re holding viewings for all the presidential and vice-presidential debates this year and that the clickers question asked and the results of those questions for each debate are available on the Mass Media Department wiki.

Barb DeSanto noted that by asking students pre-viewing clicker questions and letting them know that they would be answering post-view questions, as well, it’s likely that the students were a little more engaged during the debate.  This is a useful feature of clickers in other settings, too.  When students know that something will be asked of them, they tend to be a little more focused during any activities leading up to that “deliverable.”

Dr. DeSanto found that the reactions of Washburn students to the debates aligned well with national polling results.  This strikes me as useful, since I’ve talked with other instructors who have found that when student responses to in-class polling questions align well with national data, the students often take that national data more seriously.

Finally, I’ll point out that student responses to pre- and post-debate questions could have been collected without using clickers, perhaps through paper surveys.  One important advantage of clickers over surveys is that clickers provide immediate results.  This allows instructors to use those results to shape subsequent discussion.  I can imagine asking a few post-debate polling questions, then asking students to volunteer reasons why their peers might respond in the ways they did to the polling question.

If you have any thoughts on using clickers during this presidential election season, feel free to leave a comment below!

I ran across two news stories this week describing campus viewing parties for last Friday’s presidential debate that featured the use of clickers to poll audience members.

About a hundred students watched the debate at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.  They were asked via clickers which candidate they preferred going into the debate as well as whether or not their support shifted as a result of the debate.

Meanwhile, another hundred students and community members watched the debate at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas.  Barbara DeSanto, chair of Washburn’s mass media department, said that clicker questions were used to involve audience members in the debate and to compare local polling data, gathered via clickers, with national polling data.

Have you used clickers during debate watching parties?  Are you planning to do so for tonight’s vice-presidential debate or next week’s presidential debate at Belmont University here in Nashville?  What kinds of questions are useful to ask before, during, or after a debate?  And have you used clickers in your courses to help students engage with the presidential election process this year?