A talk given at the ALT East Midlands Regional Group Meeting, University of East Anglia, Feb 2020

1. Backchannels for in-class collaboration and feedback
John Couperthwaite, Education Consultant, Echo360

2. AccessibilityCoalescent Spaces
Active Blended LearningBYOD/SocialMedia

3. …gender differences
In-class verbal discussions
…language differences

4. Inclusive Teaching
• Make some materials available
in advance;
• Make your slides accessible;
• Use closed captions and
transcripts;
• Plan to vary your delivery;
• Record your sessions;
• Encourage participation;
• Allow time for questions;
https://inclusiveteaching.leeds.ac.uk/

5. How?
…some
backchannel
technologies

6. Show Presentation Slides
Interact with Polling
questions
Review all Q&A’s
Make notes
Question threads
Up-voting and
bookmarking Q&A’s
Question context
(slide/video
timestamp)
Anonymous or
personal response
All searchable
post-class
Teacher analytics
available on posts

7. 48
24
22 21
17
15
10
5 2 1
https://journal.alt.ac.uk/index.php/rlt/article/view/2323/2611

8. http://2016conference.ascilite.org/wp-content/uploads/ascilite2016_montpetit_concise.pdf

9. Backchannels for in-class collaboration and feedback
John Couperthwaite, Education Consultant, Echo360, @johncoup
Benefits for Learners
o Rapid verification of concepts and
feedback on ideas;
o Reinforces metacognitive approaches;
o Sense of community with peers and
teacher;
o Potential for connecting learning across
rooms and online;
o Improves self-efficacy and inclusivity;
Benefits for Educators
o Teaching tool to support class
engagement;
o Reduce clarification questions;
o Promote greater group identity for class;
o Ability to link pre-class, post-class and
distance learners;
o Analytics to evaluate engagement and
early warning retention issues.

10. Backchannels for in-class collaboration and feedback
John Couperthwaite, Education Consultant, Echo360, @johncoup
Further reading…
• Have a question? Just ask it: using an anonymous mobile discussion
platform for student engagement and peer interaction to support large
group teaching (Tan et al, 2020) - Link
• Inclusive learning and teaching project (University of Leeds) - Link
• 21 ways to teach with Echo360 – Link
• Coalescent spaces (David White, UAL) – Link
• Active blended learning (University of Northampton) – Link
• Assessing the impact of an “Echo360-Active Learning
• Platform”- enabled classroom in a large enrolment blended
• learning undergraduate course in Genetics (Montpetit & Sabourin,
2016) - Link