Introducing Gogy: Participative Pedagogy through Interactive Lectures 

Primary Presenter: Bret Fund

Organization: University of Colorado Boulder

Role: Assistant Professor

Track: Technology Round-Up

Level: For Mere Mortals

Abstract: This session will explore how to incorporate additional student interaction during class lectures. Traditionally, a professor will ask questions or call on students to increase the participation of the students. I will present using a newly developed technology – Gogy – that allows for this traditional model to be enhanced through technology. This technology offers the possibility of incorporating every student’s point of view of a particular topic or question before, during and after the presentation.

Bio: Bret is currently an Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado in Boulder.  He teaches on new venture creation and investment at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.  His research focuses on improving organizational performance through appropriate governance and decision-making.  He oversees a student-run venture fund that invests in local startups in the Denver-Boulder area and he is an advisor and board member of two local startups.  Bret is interested both personally and professionally in the intersection of education and technology and has created a Saas platform to enable educators to more easily interact with their students beyond the classroom.

Description: 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 they are also the generators of it.  In a classroom setting this has not taken hold in the same fashion. What if, instead of being merely consumers of information, they 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.

This session will explore how to incorporate additional student interaction during class lectures.  Traditionally, professor will ask questions or call on students to increase the participation of the students in the lecture material.  I will present using a newly developed technology that allows for this traditional model to be enhanced through technology.  What this technology offers is the possibility of incorporating every student’s point of view of a particular topic or question and not just the few who are called on or volunteer their answers.  I will use the technologies in the first part of the session when talking about participative pedagogy so that everyone can understand how it works first hand.  The second part of the session will be open for further discussion and case studies of how this interactive technology can be applied.