Introducing Backstage – a digital backchannel for large class lectures

Abstract

PurposeThis paper seeks to report on the conception of a novel digital backchannel, Backstage, dedicated to large classes, aiming at empowering not only the audience but also the speaker, at promoting the awareness of both audience and speaker, and at promoting an active participation of students in the lecture. In learning settings with a large and typically passive audience, the goal of Backstage is to foster active participation and facilitate collaboration akin to small‐learning groups.Design/methodology/approachThe authors present the concept of a novel kind of digital backchannel that supports different forms of inter‐student communication via short microblog messages, social evaluation, and ranking of messages by the audience. The backchannel further supports immediate concise feedback to the lecturer of selected and aggregated students' opinions, making it possible to strengthen the lecturer's awareness of students' difficulties.FindingsThe concept is the outcome of a joint effort between computer scientists and educational scientists, and unifies technical and usability aspects with educational claims.Originality/valueThe concept combines computer‐mediated communication with elements of social media that not only foster active participation and collaboration among a large and otherwise passive audience, but also provide social means to self‐regulation and management of the backchannel discourse. The design of the backchannel is strongly influenced by findings of educational sciences.