I don’t think this is a word, but I’m going to use it anyway: Backchanneller.

There are many educators using tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Adobe Connect for the first time. These educators are learning that it is very hard to be presenting with these tools and also pay attention to the chat, and what is happening in the digital room, while also delivering instructions or a lesson. One thing that can make this easier is to have a back channel helper, or a backchanneller.

People who run Twitter Chats understand this. They use a team of people to help welcome people to the chat, retweet, and like good responses, while the main moderator pushes out the questions and engages with individual tweets. A single moderator struggles to do it all.

For video-based classes and lessons the teacher/presenter will often struggle with:

• Following the chat
• Picking out good questions
• Helping to orient latecomers
• Finding the person with their mic on, causing a distraction
• Keeping the chat on topic, or at least monitor the chat for people causing a distraction.

It’s hard to do these things while also trying to be engaging and/or creating an interactive lesson.

The primary role of the backchanneller is to monitor what’s happening in the chat in the background, and to assist the teacher/presenter. These are the main roles:

• Look for good questions
• Respond to simple questions
• Choosing the right time to interrupt, if the question warrants it… and avoiding questions that would interrupt or derail the lesson, or that can wait for an appropriate pause in the lesson.

There are other things the backchanneller can do, as mentioned above, but the moderation of the chat is key.

It’s hard to run a lesson and watch a chat conversation at the same time. It’s easy to unintentionally let the chat take over the lesson. Having a backchanneller, who can be a student, who understands the responsibility of the role, can help a lesson go considerably better. A backchanneller reduces the cognitive load on the teacher/presenter and lets them focus on the intent of the lesson or presentation.

It’s great when a participant, a student, can take on the role of backchanneller. It’s empowering. Explicitly explaining the importance of this role, and reflecting on the person’s effectiveness can also be a useful thing to do, to help the audience or class understand the value of this useful teaching assistant. And that’s the ultimate role of a backchanneller, an assistant, someone who monitors and manages a conversation stream while the teacher pays attention to the lesson or presentation.