WishList: ChatRoulette for the Classroom

In February, media hysteria about sexting seemed to recede somewhat as a new beast slouched onto the scene: ChatRoulette.  ChatRoulette connects you with random people–potentially anyone with a video camera, giving you a “next” button as your gong: If the person you’re talking with is boring or offensive, just shuffle off to the next person.

This technology has been pretty exciting, as guys are now able to show their penises to unsuspecting people from around the world, as opposed to just their neighbors.  The media coverage has been so overheated that John Stewart–no social media enthusiast–mocked it:

Casey Neistat takes a more data-driven to ChatRoulette, complete with stopwatch and pervert-graph:

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

(I love this line: “If you can ignore all the masturbators . . . you’re left with this: something that transports you around the world.”)

danah boyd has the best non-video response to ChatRoulette, sticking up for sites that interject a little randomness into our carefully tended social networks.

ChatRoulette doesn’t have much appeal to me–let’s face it, I’d get nexted in a heartbeat, and who needs that kind of rejection?  Plus, I spend an awful lot of time having genuinely random and unexpected conversations in real life. (“Doesn’t academic freedom mean X”?  “You said I could coach . . . so I’m going to coach MY WAY!!”)  I’m plenty weirded out by that, without actively seeking even more randomness.  And while I can imagine all sorts of classes for which a site like this might be genuinely useful, most of those classes don’t involve Victorian lit.

But I wanted to write about this for ProfHacker because ChatRoulette–or, at least, a suitably modified version thereof–could be a fascinating way to think about one of the most distressing pedagogical problems I face: How to improve the paper that’s technically fine, but terminally boring.  A student who’s a competent writer but a disengaged reader typically produces writing that can’t rise much above a B-, and can’t always recognize why.

As a thought experiment, it’s interesting to contemplate an environment in which students could “next” each others’ papers ideas in real time.  This isn’t quite the same as “workshopping paper topics,” which sounds very earnest and improving. Sometimes, though, what you need is just a quick judgment: is this interesting enough to bother with?  Some paper ideas, after all, aren’t worth improving.

It’s closer in spirit to an “elevator pitch,” but the point of that conceit is that the pitcher gets to complete their pitch!  While you have to compress your idea dramatically, the pitchee can’t, after all, climb out of the elevator.

What I have in mind is, basically, IsMyThesisHotorNot.edu.  It’s too cruel to actually implement: The first time a student showed up tearfully in the office of a chair, dean, or ombudsman, the plug would be pulled quickly.  But there really ought to be a way to model for students the visceral part of responding to their work–just how quickly a reader decides whether something is likely to be interesting.  The ability to say something genuinely interesting is just about the only skill worth practicing, and we don’t have enough ways to engage those students who come into class disconnected.

Image by Flickr user gordontarpley / Creative Commons licensed