Maybe Sugato Chakravarty should wear a helmet to class. The professor of consumer sciences and retailing at Purdue University repeatedly attempts the instructional equivalent of jumping a motorcycle over a row of flaming barrels.

OK, asking 250 students to post questions on Twitter during a class doesn’t risk life or limb. But it can cause ego damage if the mob of students in his course on personal finance gets disorderly online.

He has given them the power to do just that. As Mr. Chakravarty paces the front of a stadium-style lecture hall, wearing a wireless microphone to make sure his lecture reaches the nosebleed seats, some students crack jokes anonymously in an official Web forum. The course is one of two at Purdue that are testing homemade software called Hotseat, which lets students key in questions from their cellphones or laptops, using Twitter or Facebook.

Seen at The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)