I decided to allow laptops in the classroom as an experiment.
I thought there was about a 50% chance of complete and total failure. If I had to bet on it, I would have bet on failure. I had nightmares the night before in which I asked the class a provocative question which was followed by a resounding silence because they were all slouching and staring into their screens, checking their newsfeeds.
But that is not what happened. They were really excited and engaged. I got a lot of participation from a variety of students, despite the high number of people. More importantly to me, I heard from several students who had never participated in class before. But, I didn't hear from them verbally- I heard from then in one of our "backchannels."
One backchannel I created was a free, easy to use chatroom. It's called "Todaysmeet.com" and I created a chatroom for our class.
Here is a screenshot:
I've blurred the names, but the cool thing is that some of these students responded even though they typically don't raise their hands in a room of over fifty people. But they felt comfortable commenting through the chatroom. They asked questions that I was able to later respond to. And all of the students have the link, so it's kind of like a built in study session- the students have an easy way to bounce questions off of each other. They haven't used the chatroom in this way yet, but I'm just happy that is gives people an opportunity to add to the discussion during class, in real time- even if they don't want to raise their hand.
The other backchannel I used is a Google Doc. Google Docs can have up to 50 real-time collaborators, but for this go around I had 3 designated note takers whose job is was to collaboratively prepare notes during the lecture.
When my husband was in medical school, they had the same sort of idea. They had a "scribe" for each lecture. Someone different every time. Then, the notes were made available to the entire medial school class.
This is similar, but there are a handful of note-takers working as a team from different parts of the classroom.
I do not use Power Points, so this is not as if they simply copied down what they saw on a screen. These are notes that were prepared in real time and I feel they are an excellent reflection of what happened in class:
For this time only, I sent a link to the collaboratively prepared document to all students. Not all of them are collaborators, so not everyone can edit the document. However, everyone can view it.
I spoke with a collaborator after class, and she said she really enjoyed it, and that it was "cool" to see another student going back in and filling out details she herself had missed. She noted that together, they were able to organize the notes in real-time.
I've asked those interested in becoming a collaborator to e-mail me. In the future, only collaborators will get the links to the documents (my thought being that this would encourage students to be involved in the process and not just beneficiaries. They would have to be a designated note-taker at least once over the course of the semester).
I was pleased with how these experiments turned out. The really exciting part to me is that collaborators can continue to add to the notes outside of class. If someone finds a link to a relevant website or an image, they can share them on this document.
And, because I am the "owner" of the document, I have the ability to edit as well. I am going to try to refrain from doing so- I want this to be a student-created document. But, if there was something I really wanted to emphasize, I have the ability to add to the conversation.
I did not feel that students were less engaged than they were prior to the integration of laptops. As long as this continues to be the case, I want to continue the experiment.
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