Bret Fund Uses Gogy to Spark Interactive Discussion in Entrepreneurial Course

Educators often struggle with two problems in classes that require some type of lecture component. First, educators often underutilize the collective knowledge and experience of the audience due to the broadcast nature of lecturing and the temporal constraints produced by meeting in a physical space bounded by time. Second, they rarely get substantive feedback on the effectiveness of their ability to leverage this pedagogical tool (lecturing) in disseminating the chosen content knowledge or obtaining an accurate read as to what content knowledge needs further (or less) explanation. As a result of these two problems, presentations and lectures can be very ineffective in terms of student engagement with the material and overall performance outcomes.

Opportunity:

Gogy is an online software that transforms ordinary lectures and presentations into interactive discussions, creating a more collaborative learning environment that lasts far beyond the presentation event. Gogy does this by allowing all audience members to interact around the content of a presentation through slide-by-slide interactions, by allowing audience members to include and share additional related content to the other audience members, and by giving access to the shared content and materials well after the course has ended. Unlike other methods of encouraging discussion during lectures that focus on selective face-to-face interaction of a few audience members, Gogy is simple, straightforward and takes static presentation slides and makes them interactive. By using Gogy, students can learn from the professor (as they define the knowledge to be disseminated), as well as from other students (as they provide comments and other relevant content to the slides), and the professors are also able to learn from the students (both about the content as well as how well the students liked or understood what was being taught).

Pedagogical Basis:

The term “participative pedagogy” starts with the fact that we are living in a society and time where current technologies are reshaping the ways we interact with one another and the world around us (Shirky, 2008). One of the unique trends in our current environment is how users not only consume content they deem useful, but also how they are the generators of content. In a classroom setting, this trend has not taken hold in the same fashion. What if, instead of being merely consumers of information, students can become active generators of insights and material surrounding the topics being discussed? This is what participative pedagogy embodies. In other words, students take an active versus passive role in their learning process both in and out of the classroom.

Course Details:

I plan on exploring the use of interactive lectures in my ESBM 3700 course. It is an introductory entrepreneurship course that is a mix of lectures, cases, projects and writing assignments. It usually has between 30 and 40 students every year and is taught in the business school.

Duration of Use:

I plan to use interactive lecture technology (Gogy) throughout the entire semester. This means there will be around 15 lectures that will be uploaded to the software and will be available to the students to interact around.

Description of Use:

Gogy transforms ordinary lectures and presentations into interactive discussions, creating a more collaborative learning environment that lasts far beyond the presentation event. Gogy does this by allowing all audience members to interact around the content of a presentation through slide-by-slide interactions, by allowing audience members to include and share additional related content to the other audience members, and by giving access to the shared content and materials well after the course has ended. Unlike other methods of encouraging discussion during lectures that focus on selective face-to-face interaction of a few audience members, Gogy is simple, straightforward, and takes static presentation slides and makes them interactive. By doing this, students can learn from the professor (as they define the knowledge to be disseminated), as well as from other students (as they provide comments and other relevant content to the slides) and the professors are also able to learn from the students (both about the content as well as how well the students liked or understood what was being taught). Below is a screenshot of what the interface looks like.

Frequency of Use:

I usually lecture once a week and then conduct activities during the other class session for the week. I hope that the interaction around the lecture content however goes beyond the once a week session. Therefore, I hope to be able to use and interact with my students on a daily or on an every other day basis through the software.

Scope of Use:

This will be only one element of my course and pedagogy this semester. While it will be an important way that I interact with my students around lecture content, there are many other elements to the course. I am using this tool only to increase engagement and interaction around my lecture content.

Intended Outcomes and Measuring Growth

The intended outcome for the use of Gogy is to increase interaction around the content of the lecture beyond the classroom lecture day. This is will most likely take the form of comments and posts to myself or other students around the lecture. I will be able to measure the changes in students’ behaviours because they will either use or not use the software to interact with me and the others in the class. Ultimately, I would love to be able to measure what influence the use of Gogy has on knowledge retention, but I do not expect to gather this data this time around. I would imagine that I would need to teach two identical classes and use Gogy in one and not the other to adequately compare the influence of Gogy on knowledge retention.