Wednesday, March 16, 2016 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 // The Statement 
 
5B

Every Monday and Wednesday at 1 p.m., room 1230 of the Undergraduate Science 

Building slowly fills with students. Around 1:05, Communication Prof. Paddy Scannell 
walks to the chalkboard at the front of the room and begins to write out his plan of attack. 
As white chalk hits green slate stone, his nearly 50 years of academic teachings present 
themselves to approximately 80 students that are still filing into room.

Usually, the format of the writing reads as an outline, but sometimes diagrams of 

interconnected ideas or key figures commandeer a large portion of the board. When the 
writing stops, the professor takes a step back, looks over his work one final time and begins 
his lecture. Throughout the lecture, he will add points or diagrams that complement what 
is already there.

In a world of hyper connection, PowerPoint presentations and iClickers, Scannell 

consciously selects only two technologies to engage with his students: his voice and the 
piece of chalk in his hand. It is the technology of talk and the technology of chalk brought 
together to educate the masses.

Although it isn’t electrically powered or connected to the Internet, Scannell’s lecture is 

technologically considered. It is technological efficiency in its purest form.

***
The nature of the average college classroom is radically different today than it was even 

five years ago. In almost every classroom on campus, professors have the ability to use a 
projector screen, a desktop computer, document cameras and sometimes even electronic 
whiteboards. Looking back at those professors are often hundreds of glowing Apple logos, 
illuminating the thousands of dollars in laptops brought to class each day by students.

With an ever-expanding wireless network supported by the University of Michigan, 

both professors and students in modern higher education quite often mix class with the 
Internet interactions. Professors might spend some of their lecture showing a YouTube 
video or a Prezi presentation. Meanwhile, students might spend some of the same lecture 
taking notes on a Google Doc while simultaneously filling out an online survey to find out 

which character from “The Walking Dead” they are most like.

Outside the classroom, learning management systems like Canvas and CTools connect 

professors and students in ways that 1950s college students could never imagine. E-mail 
systems complement such learning management platforms and allow for formal and direct 
communication between academic citizens.

Collectively, these in-classroom and online technologies have shifted the conversation 

in higher education from what a professor says to what technologies they use in the 
framework of their teaching.

Barry Fishman, a professor in the School of Information and the School of Education, 

focuses much of his teaching on how technology plays a role in the collegiate classroom. 
Having developed (among many, many other projects) a gamified class format called 
GradeCraft, which mirrors the achievements one might experience in a video game rather 
than traditional grading scales, Fishman knows all about how technology influences 
higher education.

His first experience with technology in education came when one of his undergraduate 

English classes was formatted entirely in hypertext, which is the underlying format for the 
World Wide Web.

Rather than relying on the traditional English book, Fishman’s professor used hypertext 

pages as the backbone of his classroom. In this hypertext network, Fishman’s classmates 
created content that became interconnected in ways that were not possible in a hardcover 
novel.

“It caused me to think about my own learning in a way that surprised me,” Fishman said.
Since that time, Fishman has dedicated his teaching and research to the pursuit of 

implementing technologies into learning environments that enhance the educational 
opportunities for all those involved.

His current venture, the aforementioned GradeCraft, has the ambition “to motivate 

students and allow them to feel in control of their own learning.” Rather than assigning 

CHALK TALK 
AND HYPERTEXT: 
TECHNOLOGY IN 
THE CLASSROOM

BY ELLIOTT RAINS, 
DAILY OPINION COLUMNIST

arbitrary percentages to assignments and 
allowing grade finalization to occur three 
weeks after a final exam, GradeCraft allows 
students to progressively gain points to 
reach different achievement levels.

For example, a student who reaches 7,000 

points out of the 12,000 possible points with 
10 assignments valued at 700 points each 
might earn a “C” grade if they are to not 
advance any further. Reach 10,000 points 
and that student will earn an “A” in the class. 
These scores update progressively and are 
meant to visualize academic progression, 
simultaneously encouraging students to 
take risks without fear of failure and keep 
working for greater game (read: academic) 
achievement. By turning the class structure 
into a real-world video game, Fishman’s 
GradeCraft aims to incentivize learning and 
engage students in a new way.

His work has even taken him to the 

White House, having co-authored the 
Obama administration’s 2010 U.S. National 
Educational Technology Plan.

When compared to the nature of Paddy 

Scannell’s lectures in Room 1230, one 
might assume that Fishman and Scannell 
fundamentally disagree on how to teach. 
After all, Scannell uses a blackboard, chalk 
and his voice to teach his class, which is 
underpinned by a traditional grading scale 
and structure. Fishman bases his entire 
model of instruction around a concept that 
can be played using a controller on a high-
def TV.

If there ever were polarities in the 

classroom, one would be wise to assume 
these professors were north and south. 
However, at the core of each professor’s 
ideology lies the same fundamental goal: 
to help students gain knowledge that is 
actually worth making the effort to learn.

“My philosophy of teaching is that the 

classroom experience should be some kind 
of human interaction between the teacher 
and the class,” said in discussing his class 
format.

The nature of a large lecture hall of 

80-some students necessitates a relationship 
where Scannell lectures and the students 
listen; such sacrifices must be made given 
student-teacher ratios at large universities.

As far as his use of the blackboard and 

limited visible notes, Scannell said, “It’s 
not as if I’m making (my lecture) up from 
moment to moment, but I am talking it into 
existence.”

The technology of talk facilitates this 

interaction and prevails in one of Scannell’s 
lectures. Rather than reading directly off 
a sheet of notes or a slide, Scannell’s vocal 
variance and sentence structure make each 
statement conversational, educated and, 
most importantly, humanistic.

And what goes into those limited notes 

is a conscious choice by the seasoned 
professor.

“I don’t like making (my lecture) too cut 

and dry at this point,” Scannell said.

What he hopes to achieve in his teaching 

is not for students to copy definitions off 
a PowerPoint slide and get the “cut and 
dry” experience, but rather engage in a 

conversation that sparks interest in the 
topic at hand, a sentiment Fishman, in a 
sense echoed.

“Now that most facts can be looked up, 

anything you can answer with Google 
probably isn’t worth teaching,” Fishman 
said. The “cut and dry” information one 
might get off a PowerPoint is inevitably 
something one could also find with Google.

What one cannot find on Google — and 

what might be worth taking the time to 
learn — is the conversation around topics, 
ideas, facts and history.

“The teaching situation, ideally, is an 

interaction between the teacher and the 
students,” Scannell said. It is in such an 
interaction where the technologies of chalk 
and talk facilitate what Google cannot. 
Where a computer sits, waiting for input, 
Scannell engages on his own, guiding the 
conversation in such a way that only an 
expert human in his field could do.

Furthermore, as a resident-expert on 

all types of teaching software, devices and 
inventions, Fishman insisted, “It’s not the 
technology; it’s what you do with it.”

While 
some 
might 
complain 
that 

professors like Scannell should at least use 
PowerPoint, there is nothing inherently 
possessed in a PowerPoint slide that can 
teach a student what is worth knowing. 
Likewise, while Fishman’s gameful model of 
academic progression affords students the 
ability to engage with learning in a unique 
fashion, were it to be implemented in the 
same way a traditional grading scale might, 
the technological ideology of GameCraft 
would not help at all.

Although technologies like Smart Boards, 

iClickers and tablets all generate the type 
of hype that would suggest each device is 
the singular invention that is going to “fix” 
education, Fishman says this is a myth. While 
each of these products, and the GameCraft 
program more conceptually, all allow for 
new experiences, the implementations of 
each idea is what matters.

In contrast, Fishman said, products like 

iClickers don’t bring something novel. “It’s 
a failure of imagination,” he said. “When 
people use clickers for attendance, that’s 
not new; that’s (just) a lot of infrastructure 
for attendance.”

“But 
when 
people 
do 
something 

interesting 
like 
collaborative 
problem 

solving (using clickers), that makes them 
more interesting,” he added.

For professors like Scannell, structuring 

his class to be most interesting and most 
adept at engaging students in order to 
facilitate learning might just consist of 
talking at a chalkboard for an hour and a 
half.

Of course, for all professors, it quite often 

doesn’t matter how interesting or engaging 
they might make their course if the students 
they are attempting to connect with are 
engrossed in a Buzzfeed quiz or the most 
recent Twitter updates. Laptops and laptop-
based notes facilitate more distraction 
than ever before, so maintaining focus and 
engaging with the learning process can 
become more difficult for students.

But nonetheless, all of this is to say 

that, at the aesthetic level, professors like 
Barry Fishman and Paddy Scannell seem 
to be operating in completely different 
universes when it comes to the technology 
when analyzed based on the ideology that 
underpins each professor’s views, we can 
see that technological devices or programs 
haven’t really changed the nature of 
education all that much.

Where Fishman hopes to see change 

directly 
facilitated 
in 
the 
university 

setting is in the overall structure of higher 
education. The nature of degree progression, 
based on distribution requirements, credit 
hours and measuring knowledge by the 
number of classes a person takes might soon 
see the axe if technology advances as it has 
recently.

“One of the exciting potentials in 

electronic teaching tools is they throw off a 
lot of data from the interactions,” Fishman 
said. “And, in theory, it could be used for 
very powerful means to help guide teaching 
or guide learning.”

Rather 
than 
relying 
on 
arbitrary 

measures like the credit hour, such large 
data could generate alternative credentials 
that signify actual knowledge retention and 
application.

Learning programs like ECoach at the 

University, which takes machine learning 
and applies it to artificial intelligence-based 
homework feedback, will hopefully use big 
data to enable in-classroom opportunities 
that educators dream of, as well. Of course, 
if improperly applied, even applications so 
advanced will serve little purpose beyond 
current measures.

Such is the nature of technology in the 

classroom. At the end of the day, the field 
of higher education is made up of human 
beings. And, in the eyes of human beings like 
Paddy Scannell, this human relationship 
will hopefully stick around for quite some 
time.

“So long as there are classrooms and so 

long as students assemble in a learning 
situation with faculty, there’s room for good 
old talk,” he said

***
It’s nearing 2:25 and Scannell is now 

finishing his good old talk for the day. 
As students begin to close their laptops, 
zip their book bags and pull out their 
smartphones, Scannell begins to erase the 
chalk off the green slate stone in front of 
him.

Somewhere across campus, at quite 

possibly the same moment, a group of 
students is packing their bags and checking 
their phones as Fishman is finishing his 
class for the day. As Fishman logs off his 
laptop and unplugs it from the projector, 
his metaphorical chalkboard is wiped clean 
for the day, leaving the screen on which his 
lecture notes existed barren.

At this moment, a professor who engages 

in the technology of talk and a professor 
who engages in the technology of games 
exist in symmetry. At this moment, and in 
many moments in the future, the nature of 
education will not be defined by a screen 
being on or a chalkboard being covered, 
but by the respective thought that each 
professor decided to stop on for the day and 
where they will continue with that thought 
when their class meets again. 

Photos by Zoey Holmstrom // Daily

