Jen makes some good observations and raises some questions about conveying the usefulness of a backchannel during presentations and meetings. It’s apropos as I was just having a very similar discussion today with a group of faculty attending a workshop who were also using Elluminate and experiencing the backchannel directly for the first time. I think Jen has it right… here is some of the position I take with the skeptics.

The bottom line is simple: facilitating engagement is not achieved by depriving participants of tools or materials… that’s an approach fit for prisons, not educators and educational institutions.

I’ve observed the pattern repeatedly: if you are succeeding at engaging your audience, the backchannel isn’t going to distract them anymore than their email, their cell phone, their steno pad, their belly-button lint, the odd number of ceiling tiles, the graffiti on the desk, or that piece of paper just called to be doodled on and folded into an airplane. The backchannel will naturally capture something from the attention low-points that are natural and otherwise lost, while most often providing a valuable channel for input and feedback that would otherwise be lost. If you are failing to engage an audience then you’ve failed at your task. The presence of the backchannel isn’t responsible for your failure to engage. The worst effect of a backchannel added to a failed presentation or meeting is the fact that it memorializes your failure… at best it might provide some extra return in both content that didn’t make it into the meeting and a history that might provide clues as to what went wrong.

The cognitive studies regarding multi-tasking aren’t as cut and dried nor as directly applicable as the supporters of said studies would like people to think. In particular, attendance at meetings and presentations is a very different prospect than engaging in a single, sustained and directed task-based effort, so the “dilution” of attention doesn’t necessarily have the same effects. Having a conversation with someone while cooking a meal won’t necessarily detract from the making of the meal… talking to them while engaged in a serious game of chess will. Attention at events like meetings operates in natural cycles of ebb and flow. If we can capture some of the attention that would otherwise be directed away, it’s potentially (and in my experience, actually) a net gain.

Beyond that, we have to get at what the irritation and distraction expressed by people is really about. Some people are offended by the mere fact that others are “not paying attention.” I could care less about that. Some are distracted because they don’t know (or choose) to filter the backchannel out. This can be taught and they are then empowered to make a choice. Others have bought into what I consider a common fallacy: if the backchannel weren’t there that attention would be directed at them (or whoever is speaking) instead. We all know that regardless of what a participant has at hand– a backchannel, a laptop, a cell phone, a book, or a set of Legos– they are not and never will direct 100% of their attention forward and they will find ways to create the attention cycles that characterize engagement. I was able to ignore all of my horrible, disengaged, shallow, incompetent teachers just fine back when the only thing digital any of us had access to was a watch. 

The real power of the backchannel lies in the hands of the leaders, whether they be leaders because they are formally in that role or simply because they can and do take charge of information wrangling. If those leaders weave backchannel information into the main part of the discourse, the value becomes much more apparent. When this responsibility is left with the speaker or other single leader alone, this management becomes part of learning how to present and how to facilitate a meeting. These are skills that are learned with practice. If you have the luxury of being able to have someone whose sole duty is to participate in the backchannel and make sure salient information gets to the leader, the problem solves itself.