http://todaysmeet.com

The basics

Todaysmeet describes itself as helping presenters to “embrace the backchannel and connect with your audience in realtime. Encourage the room to use the live stream to make comments, ask questions, and use that feedback to tailor your presentation, sharpen your points, and address audience needs.” Essentially, Todaysmeet allows people with a computing device in the room to listen to the presentation AND comment on it, discuss it or otherwise contribute via the text chat, utilising humans’ capacity to both listen and write at the same time. Because some or all other members of the audience can see what is written – they can both listen AND read at the same time.

Knowledge networking

The backchannel is, according to Todaysmeet “everything going on in the room that isn’t coming from the presenter”. Backchannels are a really good example of simple augmented reality, based on digital networked computing. For a long time, online chat was what you did alone, yet in the virtual company of others. Now, through services like backchannel, ‘chat’ is done at the same time as another, co-present event. Chatting amplifies or augments the ‘reality’ of the lecture, presentation or other activity. Effectively, you can multitask – discussing what is happening – without actually interrupting that happening. Many conferences and events, especially those involving savvy networkers, explicitly emphasise the back channel.

A good example of the networking potential of Todaysmeet is that it can, in realtime, check twitter feeds for any hashtag you identify. That way, a backchannel can be created solely of twitter comments, or a combination of twitter and direct input: this networking of two or more applications shows how knowledge networking involves both human-machine and machine-machine interaction all to benefit human-human interaction. (see below for more scholarly reading)

What is great

The technology is simple and agile – there’s no difficult setup. It’s basically a web-browser delivered real-time chat room. A unique URL is used – which is then given to everyone attending the event – and they can, using computing devices connected to the Internet, ‘chat’ about what is happening. There’s no login required or other overheads. usefully, the chat can be saved – enabling people to review it, or those not present to access it. The chat is private to those who know the unique URL which, of course, can be propagated to various audiences through other online media. Todaysmeet is great because it strips away complexity to be a very specific-purpose tool. There’s no social networking, no profiles, no login and identity management. Todaysmeet shows what Web 2.0 can be: a really old and simple idea (realtime computer-mediated text chat) which has been around for 20+ years, but now delivered via a browswer to make it incredibly accessible. It’s web as application, not web as public media.

And, to get clever – you don’t even need to HAVE a realtime physical event: todaysmeet can be a great way to set up quickly a distributed real-time chat without having to install desktop clients such as Skype, or navigate through public chat spaces such as found on IRC (Internet Relay Chat).

Pedagogic Challenge

A key practical challenge is, of course, that many students may not be able to contribute since they will not have mobile computing devices. Does this invalidate the use of Todaysmeet? No and, perhaps, with large groups it is an advantage since the chat could become very extensive and thus hard to follow (one of the problems of connectivity is that we can be overwhelmed with information). A more significant challenge is to structure the event so that the backchannel is actually directly and actively linked to it. Thus, a lecture delivered in the normal manner, with the backchannel thrown in as an afterthought, will probably lead to no significant benefit. The distraction might even make it problematic.

So, the pedagogic challenge is not ‘how to use the tool’ but, rather, to think about how the availability of a backchannel might enable us to reshape the lecture into a different kind of event. More questions and answers, less presentation; more opportunity for students to respond to ideas (and remember, in purely aural form, only one person can speak at once – on a backchannel several people can contribute at the same time). Ultimately, it is the blend of modes and voices which works, not the back channel itself.

Think too about the use of a backchannnel during a workshop or more dialogic event, enabling multiple conversations to occur at once; consider presenting, on screen, the backchannel chat as it occurs. But be careful: find the balance between the backchannel and the main channel for harmony rather than discord.

One scenario for using this tool

Presentation and discussion at once

Small group of late-year nursing students observing a demonstration of resuscitation techniques in an environment which emphasises listening and watching the demonstration by experts, who are working with real equipment on a lifelike dummy. The demonstration proceeds first by showing correct uses; then a series of staged ‘mistakes’ are made. So as to avoid interrupting the flow of the demonstration, students (all of whom have appropriate computing devices) utilise the backchannel to point out mistakes and indicate correct procedures. The teacher, who is not part of the demonstration, monitors the backchannel and ask questions, prompts and clarifies the correct answers. Later, students review the transcript of the backchannel (which is made available to them via a link from the website maintained for the unit) and answer a quiz to confirm their knowledge of correct procedures.

Todaysmeet:

• does not replace an existing technique but augments it, utilising the particular affordances of computer-mediated chat; and
• is more effective than pens and paper or aural Q&A because of the network effects (several voices at once) and digital data (persistence)

Alternatives

One useful alternative is Tinychat, http://tinychat.com, which would serve equally well. Tinychat also has video conferencing possibilities and, to be honest, is probably designed more for online chat, rather than specifically as a backchannel. Todaysmeet’s twitter integration shows its clever design. You can see some other possibilities at Richard Byrne’s Favorite Tech Resources for Teachers (https://sites.google.com/site/richardbyrnepdsite/backchannels)

Further discussion and concepts

Educause. 2010. Seven things you should know about backchannel communciation. Educause Advice Sheet.

McNely, B. 2009. Backchannel Persistence and Collaborative Meaning-Making. SIGDOC’09, October 5–7, 2009,Bloomington, Indiana, USA.

Ross, C. et al. 2010. Pointless Babble or Enabled Backchannel: Conference Use of Twitter by Digital Humanists Digital Humanities 2010 Conference, July 7-10, Kings College London, UK