Berkman Question Tool now available on Sourceforge

From Berkman Fellow Gene Koo...

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society developed, a few years ago, the Question Tool — an organized backchannel for conferences and classes that allows participants to submit, answer, and vote on questions. It’s an effective way to keep feedback focused, direct speakers to audience interests, and potentially prevent the mic from being hijacked by that weirdo.

Demand for this tool has been pretty high, and so we are now releasing the code on Sourceforge. Special thanks to Kevin Driscoll for making it happen.

We are aware of several other similar efforts:

* MIT’s backchan.nl
* Emerson College’s Digital Lyceum (NEH grant)
* Albany apparently has a similar system for in-house use (no link)

I suspect that the code will start to fork between a system designed to support classroom discussion (possibly integrated with learning management systems) vs. conference / event support and capture.

Berkman Question Tool (renamed “QuestionAnswer” because the name “Question Tool” was already taken).