Not Hitting the Road: Virtual Keynote at Engaging Students Through In-Class Technologies (ESTICT)

I’m giving the opening keynote at the3rd ESTICT (Engaging Students Through In-Class Technologies) conference hosted by the University of Bath on November 17th. I’m not traveling to the UK, however. Instead, I’ll be delivering the keynote virtually, using Google Moderator as a backchannel to field questions from the participants. Other sessions during the day will focus on tablet PCs, digital pens, iPads, and other in-class technologies. The conference has a few seats left, so if you’re in the UK and can attend, I encourage you to register!

Here’s my title and abstract:

Motivating Engagement and Learning Using Classroom Response Systems

Clickers allow students to respond to multiple-choice questions posed by their instructors.  Backchannel tools allow students to pose their own questions and offer comments on their peers’ questions.  Both of these classroom response systems can be used to tap into intrinsic motivations students have for participating during class.  In this talk, Derek Bruff will describe the kinds of clicker questions that lead to deep learning, share some tools for facilitating backchannel conversations, and provide a few frameworks for understanding the connections between these technologies and student motivation.

Image: “Avon River at Bath” by Flickr user Márcio Cabral de Moura, Creative Commons licensed.