You mention that you are developing instructor-led training into an online self-paced course; however, you do not mention the topic of the course, the types of students that you are serving, or your proposed course delivery strategy. Assumption 4: the SME-approved classroom materials that you have available to you are print-based materials. However, I am looking for shortcuts.

My focus here is an its potential for the classroom, but they are primarily used within conferences. For the classroom, backchannels lend themselves to a context where mobile device are used - so smartphones or tablets or laptops. There's also the development of keyboard skill if laptops/tablets are being used. I thought I'd write a series of posts articulating my current thinking on different types of internet based tools and their use within education. My last few posts have been based around this subject in some way or another. Firstly, backchannels. But why do this?