Bring Backchannels Up Front: Supporting In-class Communication with Classcommons
Open Access
- Author:
- Du, Honglu
- Graduate Program:
- Information Sciences and Technology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 30, 2012
- Committee Members:
- Mary Beth Rosson, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Mary Beth Rosson, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
John Millar Carroll, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Rosalie Ocker, Committee Member
Stuart Selber, Committee Member - Keywords:
- backchannel
class participation
social constructivism
education technology
sense of community
active learning - Abstract:
- In many college classrooms, students are passive spectators and the transmittal model of teaching is prevalent. In contrast to the transmittal model in which students are understood to be passive information recipients, Vygotsky’s social-constructivist theory(Vygotsky 1978) emphasizes the importance of placing students at the center of the learning process – that is by becoming active learners. Many active learning techniques have been developed, primarily focused on making students active participants in various kinds of in class activities like discussion, writing and talking. However, there is evidence that the typical university classroom setting presents some obstacles for realizing maximum effectiveness of active learning techniques like class wide discussion, debate, questioning and explaining. These obstacles include the effects of production blocking and the lack of sense of community. An emerging trend in classroom technology research is the use of computer mediated communication (CMC) tools to encourage students’ in-class participation. As part of this research thread, I have been investigating the potential of public digital backchannels for building feelings of community among students in university courses. Through an iterative design process, a digital backchannel discussion tool – ClassCommons, was designed and implemented to encourage students to easily raise questions, make comments, provide feedback for others in the class and interact with the teacher as well as other students. A design research based approach was adopted to understand the factors that influence students’ adoption of public digital backchannels in classrooms, and the real world impacts of digital backchannels in classrooms. The findings of this dissertation study show that students have a high interest in using public digital backchannel tools in classrooms. They also indicate that the amount of attention the teacher has paid to the content in the digital backchannel and the relevance of the content are important predictors of students’ adoption of this tool in classrooms. Finally the results show that use of public digital backchannel is positively related to students’ sense of community in classrooms. Overall, the study results suggest that pedagogical changes are needed on teachers’ end in order to achieve the maximum effectiveness of public digital backchannels in classrooms. This study contributes to classroom education technology research literature by offering a substantial, long-term study that evaluates the impacts of digital backchannels in classrooms. The results should be beneficial to both practitioners and researchers in this field.