This Video Conferencing Thing Is Just Not Working, Part 1
Distractions, eye strain, and Zoom fatigue are accomplishing something teachers never thought possible: Students are eager to go back to the classroom. Photo Credit: Ankara Janvier
By DANIELLA STAVIN, ABDUL AWAN, KEVIN ZHENG, and HUA BIN WU
The Midwood Argus is an open forum for student opinion. The views expressed in the paper should not be taken to represent those of the administration, faculty, or the student body as a whole. To submit a letter to the editor, click the button on our homepage.
School from home? What doesn’t sound appealing about that? No more dreadful 6 a.m. wake-ups and anxious runs to the bus stop. No more restless nights up studying, or worrying about next-day appearances.
But as the Covid-19 virus spread its way into our lives last March, and the “norms” of learning in a physical classroom shifted to learning behind a screen, that appeal began to lose its luster. Although doing school from your bed in PJs sounded fun at first, many students have started to realize that this new way of learning might be something of a curse.
Many students’ daily routines now consist of a long stream of video conference classes on Zoom or Google Meet. Though we expect a return to the physical classroom sometime this year, some education experts have predicted that this “temporary solution” is here to stay, as a growing part of the educational mix. But how do teens feel about that? The Argus surveyed 270 Midwood students of diverse backgrounds to get their views on video conferencing and how it compares to the physical classroom. Here’s what we found.
(This report appears in two parts. You can read the second part here.)
To start with, many students are struggling to resist the distractions all around them in their home. Seventy-four percent of the Midwood teens we surveyed disagreed with the statement “I feel more interested or engaged during video conferences than during in-person class.” Only 11.2% agreed, and 10.1% were not sure. When asked if it is “harder to slack off” during a video conference, 55% disagreed. Only about half that number, 30%, felt that video conferencing forces students to stay more focused than when they are physically in class.
Junior Mark Afanasyev said, “I spend around nine hours a day on the screen for school work, though it’s often longer because I get distracted so much. Sometimes, I have five tabs open while in a Google Meet. Even in-person, teachers were aware of how distracting phones were, and now we are free to do whatever we please.” It’s hard to self-police this “freedom,” he explained.
“Since we are at home, we are basically in control over everything we do,” said Jessica Sheynin, a junior. “In school you are constantly being watched by your teacher, and since we are in a working environment [during in-person school] and are told to stay off our phones, we basically have no distractions.”
Without a teacher’s physical presence, students can easily be distracted. Photo Credit: Daniella Stavin
Ms. Kimberly Lau, a chemistry teacher, said, “I think the biggest challenges students face while remote-learning are motivation and accountability. When you don’t have someone pushing you, you have to push yourself, and not everyone is able to do that.”
Teachers have been struggling to interact with their students and make the home learning experience a bit easier. Although teachers understand that students face big challenges staying on-task, talking to “Zoom initials” rather than faces makes the process difficult.
“Students rarely, if ever, turn on their cameras, and it can be a little discouraging because I can’t see faces, reactions, emotions, understanding,” said Ms. Monica Ioffe, a global history teacher.
Many students have been struggling more than usual in harder courses like AP classes, which require a lot more attention, and sometimes the use of hands-on activities, to help students grasp certain material.
“This year, I mistakenly decided to take AP Chem, and it’s probably the hardest class I have ever taken,” said Anastasia Erokhina, a junior at PPAS High School in Manhattan. “Usually, in an AP Chem class, we have to do physical experiments, but since we are at home, not actually performing them, it’s much harder for me to learn and process the information.”
Gardy Droiville ‘22 said students spend too much time in meetings, and it can be self-defeating. “The fact that [teachers] give you work in class and they give you homework to do after class can be very frustrating and overwhelming for students,” he said. “Most of my teachers give me multiple assignments in a day and have assignments on the weekends as well.”
In addition to the lack of drive to concentrate and do work, remote learning has also had a social-emotional impact on students. Without having face-to-face interactions, there’s basically no way for classmates to meet new people and make new friends.
This was one of the most overwhelming findings of our survey, where a whopping 86% of students said it was “harder to make friends or connections in video conferences than in real life.” Similarly, 84% said it was harder to “be social” on Google Meet or Zoom.
“Before quarantine last year, I was able to make acquaintances or friends in almost all of my classes, and I had a lot of people to talk to, inside and outside of school,” Afansayev said. “The connections made school life easier because we had others to discuss school with, and we could collaborate on work together.”
Senior Zi Cong Dai misses walking through the hallways, seeing all his friends, and having fun with teachers. He explained, “It’s my senior year, so I don’t like how I am spending my last year stuck at home. I would much rather enjoy this time having fun with my friends for the last time. I hope we just have a normal graduation and things start getting back to normal before the next school year.”
Jin Huang ‘21 said, “At home, it’s just you and the internet, and I use the internet all the time, so it gets boring after a while. There is no one to talk to.”
“The only way we can actually attempt to socialize is through ‘breakout rooms,’” said Nicole Salykine, a sophomore. “But even then it’s awkward because no one speaks or has their cameras on.”
Sheynin said, “It’s weird not being able to see my friends and talk to them like I would regularly in school. It’s almost like the ability to interact with people in real life is fading away.”
Even basic interactions can be painfully awkward. Seventy percent of respondents agreed that “turn-taking during a conversation is more difficult” when using video conferencing apps (17% disagreed).
It may seem obvious, but remote learning is clearly making it harder for students to make friends or social connections.
The reason for that, according to William T. Willingham, a professor in the department of psychology at the University of Virginia, is because a class discussion requires conversational nuances and eye movements, but these signals are lost in video conferencing, both because internet lag disrupts their timing and because computer equipment makes eye contact difficult. Hence the interruptions and long pauses.
Andy Chen ‘22 thinks we have underestimated the importance of body language. “It’s essential because it allows both parties to break barriers of unfamiliarity...to have a comfortable conversation,” he said.
Le Lu ‘21 added, “It’s cringey and awkward when the only people who talk go silent all of a sudden.”
But don’t teens like chatting over video conferencing apps? Not really. Only 14% of our respondents agreed with the statement “I prefer talking to people through video conferencing apps over talking physically face-to-face.”
Student-teacher relationships are suffering as well. Fifty-five percent of the students we surveyed agreed that it was “easier to build a relationship with a teacher in-person than through video-conferencing.” Only 34% disagreed.
Aaren Huang ‘22 was in the majority. “It’s a para-social relationship-type thing,” he said of video-conferencing. “It wouldn’t be strange if one day students asked for recommendation letters and the teachers didn’t even know that they had existed.”
“It’s harder to build relationships with teachers through online learning because in person we can physically interact and see them every day,” junior Omar Bottello said. “Through online, you just join the meeting and listen.”
“Last year, I was comfortable speaking to my teachers during class and asking them questions if I was confused during lessons,” said Erokhina. “Now, I barely communicate with my teachers, and if I do, it’s always through email.”
Likewise, teachers are not getting the same opportunity to develop connections with their students and their personalities.
Just having a normal conversation is a challenge on Zoom.
“I find that with remote instruction there is little room for me to really get to know my students,” said Ms. Karina Minchuk, an AP Statistics teacher. “Cameras are off and it is very impersonal.”
Technology is often presented as a way to drive engagement. But that hasn’t been the case with remote learning.
Curtiss Lu ‘22 said, “Almost every class, there’s only like three to five students who participate. Everyone else just does not talk unless they are being called on.”
It’s harder to recreate “fun” classroom activities on Zoom. “It’s mostly just independent work,” Lu said. “During Google Meets, we just listen to the teacher presenting slides.” Only 14% of students said that video conferences were better for group work than physical class. Seventy-two percent felt the other way.
The problems are biggest for students who need help the most. Studies have shown that students who already struggle in in-person classes are likely to struggle even more with online learning. And it’s harder for teachers to tell when students are lost. Eighty-one percent of teens in our survey disagreed with the statement “It’s easier for teachers to tell when I don’t understand something during a video conference than when we’re in class.”
Even when you’re paying attention, technology can get in the way of learning. Seventy-nine percent of our respondents agreed that it can be harder to understand what teachers are saying during a video conference due to audio issues.
Dylan Zhou ‘22 said that he “literally can’t understand what [his teacher] is saying half the time without her cutting out or without hearing static.”
Students were more split on when it came to asking questions, however. Forty-seven percent disagreed with the statement “I’m more comfortable asking the teacher questions during a video conference than when I’m physically in class,” but 34% agreed. “You don’t face as much shame or embarrassment as if you asked questions in person,” Huang explained.
It seems Zoom fatigue is accomplishing something teachers never thought possible: Students are eager to go back to the classroom. It was March 23, 2020 when schools began this transition to online learning. And after a year of adjusting to this technology-based environment, most students are now longing more than ever for a return to in-person school.
Gavin Jackson contributed to this article.
Selected comments from our survey:
I want to go back to school.
I hate it. It’s hard to learn anything and the teachers give too much work.
I would rather have no classes. So the teacher basically just gives us work and we complete it independently. And on our own time.
I also sometimes feel uncomfortable when I’m obliged to join a Zoom class because there are days when I have to continuously run after my sister while my mom works on the computer, and we didn’t have wi-fi for a while, so it was difficult.
I like being in my bed.
Personally I would prefer it if lessons were recorded. I took a coding summer intensive where they recorded each lesson and uploaded it. And I think that really helped me grab on to the concept. If I wasn’t paying attention, or if I just missed what they said, I didn’t need to ask a classmate what’s going on. Instead I could do things on my own and work at my own pace.
Mad wack.