Backchanneling: The Why, How, and What (Best Tool)

As I wrote previously, digital tools can support and enhance discussion among learners and adults.  As a supplement to traditional discussion strategies technology can serve as a catalyst to increase engagement by getting more people actively involved during lessons.  It can also take conversations to new levels of interactivity and expression.  Below are some of the ways I highlighted that digital discussion represents an improvement over traditional pathways:

• Allows creativity in responses (video, images, online research citations)
• Provides an avenue for open reflection
• Affords more people an opportunity to answer and ask questions
• Better meets the needs of shy and introverted students
• Can extend conversations and learning beyond the traditional school day 
• Welcomes participation from others beyond the physical location
• Can be used to show parents and stakeholders the learning that is taking place
• Works to create a culture grounded in trust and responsibility

Backchanneling is a conventional digital discussion strategy that has gained popularity since the rise of social media.  So why and how should one incorporate backchanneling during workshops, presentations, faculty meetings, after hours, or in classrooms? Backchannel Chat has some good answers to both of these questions below:   

A backchannel is a conversation that takes place alongside an activity or event. Backchannels or back-channeling is common at conferences where attendees use tools like Twitter to discuss the various presentations in near real time. This gives the audience a real voice and helps to include and engage the audience in ways not seen before. 

In an educational context, a backchannel can provide quiet students with a place to ask questions without speaking up. A backchannel is a place that teachers can share supporting resources such as video's, links and photos. Teachers can ask questions and watch the response of students to determine if they understand the concepts being discussed. Students can search the backchannel for notes and resources without having to scribble personal notes on paper.

Image credit

With the why and how in place the final step is to focus on what tool is best to use to facilitate a backchannel.  In many cases, especially during conferences, presentations, and workshops, Twitter is the preferred medium for this.  The issue with Twitter though is that not everyone might be signed up to are comfortable with using this tool. In the case of classrooms, this issue is prevalent as well as the fact that some schools still block Twitter while age restrictions can prohibit younger learners from leveraging the benefits of a backchannel. So, what is the right tool that is free, accessible with an Internet connection, can work on any device, and is easy to set up?

In the past TodaysMeet served as the de facto tool to use to set up and facilitate an active backchannel in all contexts.  However, like many tools, we have come to love this one no longer exists.  The lesson learned here is never fall in love with a specific tool, but instead, focus on an improved learning experience our outcome that is provided. In this case, it is the backchannel experience.  After trying out many different tools I have settled on Padlet as my recommended application for backchanneling. Say what?

I know what many of you are thinking. Isn’t Padlet a tool for sharing responses in a digital Post-It note format? This is in fact how many of us have come to know and use the tool predominantly in the past. You can still use it this way, but as I was setting up a Padlet for one of my recent presentations, I stumbled upon the backchannel feature. When this option is enabled your board becomes a real-time, threaded conversation just like you would have seen in TodaysMeet. Once your board is set up create a shortened link with, share out with your audience, and in a snap, you have a backchannel set up. Other tools that can be used include Mentimeter and Yo Teach!

Whatever tool you decide on keep in mind the improved outcome you are attempting to facilitate with backchanneling. Whether it be asking questions, enhanced collaboration, reflection, or more transparent engagement the key is putting the goal front and center and selecting a tool last. 

Using Feedback Logs to Empower Learners

The most successful companies are successful because they are always looking for ways to improve.  When it comes to their employees, there is no ceiling as they are continually pursuing pathways and allocating resources to help the best get even better. The same philosophy can be applied to our schools. Continuous feedback for all learners, regardless of their abilities or where they are at, is pivotal if the goal is to help them evolve into their best. The research fully supports this proclamation.  Goodwin & Miller (2012) provided this summary:

In Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock's 2001 meta-analysis, McREL researchers found an effect size for feedback of 0.76, which translates roughly into a 28-percentile point difference in average achievement (Beesley & Apthorp, 2010; Dean, Pitler, Hubbell, & Stone, 2012). John Hattie (2009) found a similar effect size of 0.73 for feedback in his synthesis of 800 meta-analyses of education research studies; in fact, feedback ranked among the highest of hundreds of education practices he studied.

The bottom line here is that feedback matters in the context of learning. It should also be noted how it differs from assessment. Feedback justifies a grade, establishes criteria for improvement, provides motivation for the next assessment, reinforces good work, and serves as a catalyst for reflection. The assessment determines whether learning occurred, what learning occurred, and if the learning relates to stated targets, standards, and objectives. In reality, formative assessment is an advanced form of feedback. 

In my opinion, you can never provide learners with too much feedback. However, the way in which it is delivered matters significantly.  Nicol (2010) found that feedback is valuable when it is received, understood and acted on. How students analyze, discuss and act on feedback is as important as the quality of the feedback itself. I couldn’t agree more.  In a recent post I identified the following five components of good feedback:

1. Positive delivery
2. Practical and specific
3. Timely
4. Consistency
5. Using the right medium

For some more research-based tips on providing students meaningful feedback check out this Edutopia article by Marianne Stenger and the excellent image below.

Knowing what the research has found, how can educators realistically provide learners with quality feedback during every lesson? The answer lies in placing the responsibility on them. During my work as an instructional and leadership coach, I typically see teachers monitoring students during cooperative learning activities or working with specific groups face-to-face in blended learning station rotations.  During debriefs, I often ask how feedback is given.  The response is that it is presented verbally. Now I am not saying that this is an ineffective strategy at all, but something was missing. This is where I came up with the idea of feedback logs.

Think about all the conversations that educators have with learners on a daily basis. The valuable information in many cases aligns with what the research has said constitutes good feedback. The problem though is the reasonable possibility that learners forget what they have been told regarding progress or improvement and they don’t have the ability to later reflect on the feedback that was given. You know how the saying goes, out of sight out of mind. Having students create a feedback log solves this issue by helping them remember, retain, reflect upon, and chart their progress of improvement. Best of all it requires no extra time on the part of the teacher.

A feedback log can be created in many ways and aligned to skills, concepts, or standards.  Students can then use this as a means to track their progress and growth over time as more feedback is provided over the course of the year. If students genuinely own their learning, then they must be put in a position to reflect and then act on the feedback they are given. The use of a log can also strengthen partnerships with parents. By making them aware of the log, parents have an opportunity to be more involved in their child’s learning each day. 

Implementing feedback logs as a part of consistent professional practice saves precious time, can be seamlessly aligned with research-based strategies, will help students monitor their understanding of essential learnings, and can be used to provide more targeted support to those students who don’t show reasonable growth over time. Best of all they can serve as an empowerment tool to help kids exert more ownership over their learning. 

Nicol, D. (2010). From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback processes in mass higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in 
     Higher Education, 35(5), 501-517. 

Reflective Learning as the New Normal

The quest to improve pedagogy, and in turn learner outcomes, is a focus of many schools.  We toil away at chasing the next big innovative idea, trend, or tool as a path to improvement yet little changes. Maybe success lies in taking a more detailed look at daily practice. The key to future-proofing education is to empower students to not only think, but to apply their thinking in relevant ways to demonstrate what has been learned.  Whether you call this rigorous, deeper, personalized, or just plain learning is of no concern to me.  Semantics aside, the goal of all schools should be to equip students with the appropriate knowledge, skills, mindset, and behaviors to help them develop into competent learners.  Getting better at this seems to be a potential rallying cry. 

We can have students learn to do or flip the experience and have them do to learn.  The question then becomes not a conversation as to what pathway is better, but whether or not learning has occurred. Sure, we can slap a grade on it and in many cases that become the evidence that learning did or did not happen. There are flaws inherent here. As many grading practices still are entirely arbitrary and do not provide an accurate indication of learning, we need to re-think our practice. Now I am not saying to do away with grades or tests, as that is just not realistic right now, although it might be at some point in the future. The question then becomes what can be integrated into daily practice to help students learn? 

To get to where you want to be, you need to be honest about where you are right now. This leads me to ask the following question: Are your students provided an opportunity during every lesson to reflect on what he or she has learned? As John Dewey stated, “We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.” It is not a hard ask at all to ensure that students are provided with an opportunity to reflect on the learning target for the day. As I work with schools and districts as a job-embedded coach, one of my main focus areas is to help improve pedagogy both with and without the use of technology. More often than not I do not see opportunities for student reflections through countless walk-throughs, lesson plan reviews, or audits of how digital tools are being used. This is an easy fix if an approach is taken where there is a combination of self-efficacy and commitment to a school-wide goal.  

Something so simple can have a significant impact on learning.  The University of Sheffield provides the following synopsis that validates the importance of this pedagogical strategy:

Reflective learning is a way of allowing students to step back from their learning experience to help them develop critical thinking skills and improve future performance by analyzing their experience. This type of learning helps move the student from surface to deep learning.

Daily reflection provides students with an opportunity to exert more ownership over their learning. Below are some simple strategies that can be used to integrate reflection into any lesson:

• Writing - A daily journal, blog, and LMS (i.e., Google Classroom) can be added as a means to not just review, but also reflect on prior learning.  It can also be used as a form of closure. Simple reflective prompts can also be used.  During a coaching visit I observed Zaina Hussein, a 4th-grade teacher at Wells Elementary, use this with her students (see image below). A great deal of research reviewed by Lew & Schmidt (2011) in their study suggests the positive impact of reflective writing on cognitive development. 

• Video – Flipgrid fever has overtaken many schools. This tool can allow students to use video to reflect on their learning. They can be guided with simple prompts like the ones used by Ms. Hussein. All of the videos are then easily accessible for review on a grid. Think about the value of having students see and hear from their peers about what they either learned or struggled with during the lesson. In their research, Rose et al. (2016) found that video made the reflection experience more authentic and meaningful for both student and teacher.
• Peer interaction – Research by Hatton & Smith (1995) indicated that engaging with another person in a way that encourages talking with, questioning, or confronting, helps the reflective process by placing the learner in a safe environment so that self-revelation may take place.  Consider implementing the critical friends’ strategy or more opportunities for discussion as a means to reflect.

For more strategies and ideas on how to incorporate reflection into pedagogical practice check out this article. If you are interested in learning more about how technology can be used as a catalyst for reflection the check out this post by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano HERE. She also created a great summary image, which you can view below. 

Making the time for students to reflect on their learning leads to more ownership of the process, builds essential connections between both present and past experiences, provides teachers with valuable information related to standard attainment or mastery, and compels them to exert a degree of self-management as they become more capable of regulating their own learning. With these positive outcomes, reflective learning should become the new normal.

Hatton, N., & Smith, D. (1995). Reflection in Teacher Education: Towards Definition and Implementation. 
     The University of Sydney: School of Teaching and Curriculum Studies.

The Pedagogy of Digital Discussion

I wasn’t an overly confident student when it came to engaging in open conversations during class.  If one of my teachers posed a question, I only raised my hand if I was 99.9% sure that I knew the correct answer.  I guess you can chalk this up to the fact that I lacked a certain degree of confidence in my knowledge acquisition or the fact that I was a relatively shy student when it came to class participation. Perhaps it was a combination of both. There were other issues at play that impacted my level of engagement. Not only was I averse to answering questions, but I also rarely directed any to my teachers outside of a one on one conversation.  Discussions with my peers were limited to the rare occasion when a cooperative learning activity was planned.  Such was life in a classroom back in the day.

I often reflect on what my learning experience might have been like had my teachers had access to and used the many interactive tools that are available today to enhance classroom discussion. During every single workshop I facilitate, I have participants in both peer and randomly selected groups engage in face-to-face conversations on numerous question prompts. It is during this time that they get to share their ideas on the topic, discuss implementation strategies, reflect on what others have said, or provide positive reinforcement.  I am always inspired when I eavesdrop on these conversations. There is no substitute for real human interaction as this is the ultimate relationship builder.  After a set amount of time, they are then all asked to share their responses using one of many different digital tools. 

Let me take a step back now and share some insights on why classroom discussion is so meaningful. As I was researching for some solid pedagogical links, I came across this wonderful article that Todd Finley wrote for Edutopia titled Rethinking Whole Class Discussion. It is not only a great read but also what he cites aligns with the strategies that I described previously in this post.  Here is one piece that he shared:

Quality discussion, according to the University of Washington's Center for Instructional Development and Research, involves purposeful questions prepared in advance, assessment, and starting points for further conversations. Teachers are also advised to:

• Distribute opportunities to talk
• Allow discussants to see each other physically
• Ask questions that "may or may not have a known or even a single correct answer.”
• Foster learners talking to peers
• Encourage students to justify their responses
• Vary the types of questions

Below are some strategies to enhance classroom discussion. For even more research-based ideas click HERE. 

Research supports the importance of discussion when backed by the purposeful use of technology.  Smith et al. (2009) found the following:

When students answer an in-class conceptual question individually using clickers, discuss it with their neighbors, and then revote on the same question, the percentage of correct answers typically increases. Our results indicate that peer discussion enhances understanding, even when none of the students in a discussion group originally knows the right answer.

As a supplement to traditional discussion strategies technology can serve as a catalyst to increase engagement by getting more learners actively involved during lessons.  It can also take conversations to new levels of interactivity and expression.  There are so many great tools to choose from, but we have to be focused first on the improved outcomes that can result from purposeful use.  Digital discussion: 

• Allows creativity in responses (video, images, online research citations)
• Provides an avenue for open reflection
• Affords more learners an opportunity to answer and ask questions
• Better meets the needs of shy and introverted students
• Can extend conversations and learning beyond the traditional school day
• Welcomes participation from others beyond the brick and mortar classroom
• Can be used to show parents and stakeholders the learning that is taking place
• Works to create a culture grounded in trust and responsibility

Now that I have covered the many ways digital discussion serves as a sound pedagogical strategy, the next step is to begin implementing various tools into daily lessons and learning activities.  Some of my favorites include Mentimeter, Gsuite, GoSoapBox, Yo Teach!, and Padlet (check out the backchannel option). Many learning management systems (Google Classroom, Schoology, Microsoft Teams) have opportunities to facilitate digital discussion as well.  Harness the power of digital to take conversations to the next level while empowering both students and adult learners in the process.


Smith, M. K., Wood, W. B., Adams, W. K., Wieman, C., Knight, J. K., Guild, N. & Su, T. T. (2009) Why peer discussion
     improves student performance on in-class concept questions. Science 323 (5910):122–24.