I am in favor of slow, deliberate readings of texts, their in-depth dissection in class using analog processes such as speaking out loud, discussions and the Socratic method of questioning.

- Email from a professor, turning down Acadly’s instant messaging

Let’s start with the point with which we agree here. Yep, speaking out loud, discussions and conversations are the best way to inspire critical thinking. Socrates’ principle was to encourage and indeed, sometimes force his pupils to ask questions and arrive at the answers through critical examination.

What we disagree with is the “analog” part. Now digital stuff and professors aren’t natural friends, so here’s the defense for texting, messaging, pinging, IMing, DMing, poking and whatnot.

But first…

0. The non-issue

Often people question the validity of the Socratic method for courses where students are required to learn complex things. For instance, you can’t expect a 6th grade student to discover the theory of gravitation through questioning but you can definitely explain it to one. This isn’t a problem, as we see it. There’s plenty of research out there supporting the merits of questioning and Socratic discourse in almost all subjects. Also, the ideological reason for encouraging participation was summed up pretty nicely by educator George Woodbury in a recent webinar on “Discovery in Developmental Math”.

They won’t discover all of trigonometry but a questioning culture helps anyway

So to clarify, this is not an anti-Socrates rant. Also, there are some very good reasons we talk about “texting” or instant messaging here and not discussion forums on an LMS. There are some good design-related arguments about why those don’t really work and we’ve discussed that in an earlier post (here). Coming to the problems texting solves:

1. The time problem

Take, for example, this conversation Socrates had. It’s 3100 words long. That’s 20 minutes of talking.

Now, in a class of 50 students, say there’s room for 30 hours of lecture-time. Even in a brilliantly-designed course, 2/3rds of those will likely be spent lecturing.

That leaves you with 10 hours, or 12 minutes per student per semester for Q&A. And how many of your students ask questions? On an average, perhaps the 80–20 rule will hold, i.e., 80% of the questions will come from 20% of the class.

Clearly, restricting teacher-pupil talk to class-time isn’t enough. It’s surprising we’re even talking about the Socratic method if we’re hesitant to join students for online conversation because it eats up into our personal time (which is also a misconception).

In case you were wondering, Acadly’s classroom messenger comes with math-text support

2. The immediacy or promptness problem

A common concern among professors is that giving students a way to text and then not being regular with replies would do more harm than good. However, research contests that assumption.

Perception matters

Opening channels has a positive impact on the perception of instructor immediacy, so even if you’re not online all the time, let the questions pour in. Answer them later… or don’t, as long as you’re solving problem #3.

3. The student-to-student chatter problem

Most professors view students interacting with each other as a problem. However, it has a positive impact on their participation with the professor too. Check out the results of this study, for example:

Source. Big class sizes are externalities. Encouraging student-to-student interactions is up to you.

To explain, the study reveals that the more your students talk to each other, the higher the chance that they’ll participate in class too. While class size isn’t always under your control, the other stuff is. When you open up channels for social Q&A, not only does it increase participation, it also gives students a way to answer each others’ questions and take the load off of you.

4. The quantity problem

Professors and classmates (or other humans) aren’t the only means for students to get answers in today’s world. They need to be encouraged to learn from their textbooks, the internet and other tools as well. Research shows that personalized learning (flipped or adaptive learning methods) can help reduce the need for student-teacher interaction. Here’s a snapshot of the findings:

Source. Students are half as likely to depend on instructors in a personalized classroom as in a traditional classroom

What this research essentially found out was that using personalized learning halves the need for professor-student interaction, and doubles student-material and student-student interaction.

Personalized learning can help reduce the quantity of professor-student conversation, and texting is integral to that. There’s really no edtech solution that makes sense in the absence of online conversation tools.

5. The email problem

On emails, you don’t copy the whole class because there’s no way to know which discussion would be relevant for everyone. However, even if a question is relevant for, say 5% of your students, it is worthwhile to put it out there. Being on a group messenger may be the best bet to reduce repetition in questions.

Features like upvotes helps others indicate when a question is relevant for them too.

Upvotes on Acadly help avoid repetition

6. The unsolved problem that you probably hadn’t even thought about

Being on messengers and Q&A tools can sometimes be a jarring experience. You’re often left wondering what the context of a conversation is. A simple student query like “Doubt regarding Q.2 of Homework 1" can leave you scurrying for the assignment on your LMS, SRS, cloud storage or whatever.

And that’s one of the big problems Acadly’s messenger solves — the chat is context-aware.

Using Acadly is akin to using an LMS, a Student Response System and an instant messenger, all at once (it’s free too), which gives it this unprecedented capability.