[ckwang]

That's actually my lecture that ClassMetric broke down in the blog post. From a (first time) instructor's perspective, I don't see the tool as a distraction to students. I'm not punishing students for using it, and students have another way to communicate to me that they don't understand something in lecture. I only lectured for one hour a week, the TAs spent the majority of the time with the students. In my case, Class Metric allowed me to touch on the big ideas of the week during my lecture, measure confusion on topics, and figure out how TAs should structure their discussions and labs to be the most useful to the most students. The message posting system also allowed TAs to participate directly during lecture as well, answering questions and addressing confusion as it appeared so students could better keep up with the lecture material. Yes, it may be distracting to have knowledge coming from two channels, but students can still refer back to that channel later when they are reviewing the whole lecture material.