NKU students, faculty use technology to talk back to presidential debate

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ky. - More than 100 students and faculty at Northern Kentucky University gathered to watch the first presidential debate of 2012 in a unique and high-tech way.

They crowded into every available seat and even sat on stairways inside the Digitorium at Griffin Hall to watch the debate on a giant TV screen and use their smartphones and computers to tweet comments and answer questions about the debate.

Like the audience in Denver, this crowd was completely quiet during just about all of the 90 minutes of the debate. They did provide some interesting answers to questions they could answer with text messages.

In one survey, a majority of the crowd liked the red tie Gov. Mitt Romney was wearing, over the the blue tie President Obama wore during the debate.

However, President Obama faired much better in the question about which candidate better understands students. Fifty-eight percent thought the president was meaner during the debate than Gov. Romney.

In another text message survey, 75 percent said that President Obama had a better sense of humor during the debate than Gov. Romney.

NKU admitted it was the first time they tried this electronic tweeting and instant messaging approach to covering a presidential debate. The only problem was Griffin Hall lost all Internet access around 10 p.m., about an hour into the debate. You could see the feed for the survey questions go to a red line marked "loading" and the tweet feed remained the same.

At about 10:25 p.m., the feed from C-SPAN was lost. It took what appeared to be a reboot of the system to get the debate pictures and sound back on line.

NKU plans on holding similar digital debate watching sessions during the upcoming presidential and vice presidential debates scheduled during October.