Escaping zoom, does synchronous typed chat provide a richer experience?

Description

The need to move all learning online, in some cases overnight, pushed most universities into what seemed like the obvious choice of voice and video gatherings, whether in Zoom, Teams or one of the many other platforms available. However there are alternatives and these may provide a richer learning experience in certain situations.

We have successfully delivered a fine art Masters course fully online since 2004, when synchronous video was a far distant dream and even the ubiquitous asynchronous platform that is youtube hadn't even been invented. At that time and still prevalent now, there was a bias towards asynchronous chat forums for online learning, however we quickly found that a small group synchronous typed chat session provided many advantages.

Even in 2020, in the midst of the global pandemic, after experiments with different synchronous live video sharing, our group of students requested that we used the typed chat structure for a vital symposium they had to deliver. Why was this? What did they perceive as the added value? Does this seemly backwards step in terms of technology actually provide us with some vital ways of decolonising our learning systems? Does a typed chat structure provide a safer space for diversity and a more equal space for each voice? Drawing on our experience over many years and students' comments, this session will explore these questions.

Takeaway

1. even in the fast changing online world there are lessons to be learnt from our online past
2. there is no perfect way of learning online but there are alternatives to the seemly obvious and dominant forms that attempt to replicate face to face
3. does assuming all students can engage with fast bandwidths and fast computers lead to maintaining dominant voices in the learning dialogue?
4. a variety of methods, including typed chat sessions, can provide valuable space for diversity
5. technically a typed chat is a 'low band width' option but it is a 'high band width' option in terms of engagement?

Abstract

I remember the very first session of the online learning that I facilitated for the fine art Masters course at the University of the Arts London. It was September 2004, I was sitting in my apartment in a city in South West China having moved there just a few weeks earlier. At the time, in the UK the internet was not very fast, but in China it was still barely reaching 56k modem speeds.

A small group of eager students gathered online in a space that had tiny video windows that could show several webcams simultaneously. However it was very quickly evident that the audio through the connections across the world were completely unusable and the videos defied their name to produce at best 1 frame per minute! Our earlier testing had been done on reasonably fast university networks and we were aware this could be an issue but once we had staff and students actually spread across the world we realised we had to improvise quickly and use the typed chat function that was available. In a very short space of time and in an amazingly organic way this became a natural and remarkably efficient structure in which to have rich and diverse conversations.

Fast forward 16 years and the we still use the synchronous typed chat as the backbone of the course. We have added live streaming and video chats at various times but although these have improved beyond recognition, there are still advantages to the older ways of doing things.

In April and May 2020, we conducted a simple experiment. With a group of 2nd year students we held several live video discussions in Zoom and Microsoft Teams in our usual weekly synchronous group session. Following these sessions there was an important symposium where students had to present pre-prepared 5 minute videos that summarised their research and art practice. These videos were followed by short discussions about each person’s presentation. When asked if they wanted to do this session in a Zoom or in a typed chat, the response was unanimous, they wanted to use the synchronous typed chat.

In this session we will explore the reasons for this and what lessons might be drawn. A simple analysis of the efficiency of the language used in the Zoom sessions compared to the typed chat suggests that the later provided a greater depth and richness to the discussion. There also appears to the implications for diversity and the way the typed chat avoids disadvantaging those with slower connections, or those fearful of using video for cultural reasons, or those struggling to find quiet, private office space in their homes. There is also evidence that the typed chat gives greater confidence to those for whom English (the language of the course) is an additional language.

Therefore does the ‘low band width’ option actually provide a ‘high band width’ space for diverse voices to contribute to the learning of all?