The students most likely to be lost are the least likely to raise a hand. Removing the name changes who speaks.
Ask a lecture hall whether anyone has questions and you will hear from the same four students all semester. It is tempting to read that as engagement variance. It is more accurately a variance in what it costs each student to speak.
Removing the cost
An anonymous question channel takes the social risk out of asking. What surprised me was not the increase in volume — it was the increase in quality. The questions that arrive anonymously tend to be the ones students were embarrassed to admit they needed.
Upvotes matter more than posts
The mechanism that did the most work was peer upvoting. It converts silent agreement into a visible signal and tells me, ranked, exactly where the room is lost.
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