 Hello there and good afternoon. I'm speaking from a slightly overcast southern England. I'm hoping to have a nice bright and happy presentation from our colleagues from the University of Sheffield. So we have Pete Mellor, Kat Baziel and Rob Spark who are going to be talking about the question of should we see students' cameras when we teach online synchronous sessions. So thank you very much and I'll hand over to you guys to start the presentation. Okay thank you very much. So thanks for joining us today. We're going to be looking through this presentation which is looking at basically a smaller version of a session we run for staff development last year. It's going to be quite interactive. We're going to ask you to keep asking us, well giving answers to questions, answering questions as we go through in the chat so we'd really like to see good use of the chat and Rob is also in there as well. But what we'd like to start with is a question before we start and what we'd like to ask you is this platform we're using doesn't have cameras for participants but if it did and we demanded right now that you switch your camera on would you do it and if you wouldn't do it just very quickly without thinking too hard about it why you wouldn't switch your camera on if we asked you. So we'll just give you a second or two to do that just sort of knee jerk reactions to that and you know if we asked you to switch your camera on why might you not do it right now. Okay so I'll just wait for some of those to come in and maybe everyone would be super happy which is why no one's replying just yet so we'll let those come in. That's one answer haven't washed your hair yeah that's YouTube user would thanks YouTube user. So yeah so there's yeah some people say they're slow down the computer so all kinds of issues like that and something else so we've actually very confident group of people these are probably 50-50 in terms of yes or no for doing so and we'll talk about some of these things later. So just a bit of context on this this is based on a session that we did in January 2020 with a very similar title for staff because there are lots of sector-wide discussions on this topic in terms of should we be asking students to feedback from staff that they don't like teaching when students have their cameras turned off and people asking can we you know can we mandate this can we tell our students to do it and what problems are they are doing it and it's to look at sort of the technical moral ethical questions that arise in this. So I'm going to hand over to Kat who's going to tell you some more about how we developed this session. Hi Al so we'll just start with a bit of background information as to why we developed the session so during the initial onset of the pandemic when the first lockdown came in we were forced into an unprecedented situation whereby teaching moved to online overnight and when keeping track of what was happening around the HE sector and we could see that there was a catalyst to look at accessibility and psychological barriers to online learning and we recognised that unlike distance learning courses students didn't sign up to these courses and visioning that debate undertaking most of their learning in the format of online. So as the digital learning team at the University of Sheffield we were looked at to provide guidance on online learning we wanted to encourage those leading sessions to think about issues their students were having when experiencing online learning for the first time probably in their university careers and we undertook a literature search to look for pedagogical and accessibility issues surrounding online learning however most was pre-pandemic due to the publishing timelines and it it made largely focused on language learning and distance learning. We did find bits starting to come through which was mainly non-peered review papers websites and blogs looking at anecdotal evidence so as Pete said we developed a session and ran it in January for looking at these reasons so now we're just going to look at reasons that you keep cameras on so I'm just going to talk for this bit and then we'll get to asking you some some questions and so the certain scenarios where it may be pedagogically valid for students to keep the cameras on in a session so as we've said it's extremely useful in language of teaching so you can pick up extra communicative gestures that are part of the language acquisition and as part of discussions in the virtual classroom interactions between student and tutor or students together so reading non-verbal cues about the discussion taking place and can also apply to breakout rooms as well where you discuss in elements of the session it's easier to help with awkward silences so you can see people thinking instead of thinking that they're not participating. You can also follow others to see if the gauging the understanding of what's been said so for example people nodding along with you or maybe looking confused and it can foster different ways of learning as well. We've seen as well deeper engagement with lecturer and material so in one of the papers that we read it said being able to see students through virtual synchronous live lectures is important for faculty so they can modify the pedagogy, pacing and presentation of concepts on the course so again using that learner feedback and non-communicative gestures and then we've seen in more practical courses as well like clinical psychology courses where you need to make visual assessments on each other it's needed to do that. We've seen students with specific learning difficulties may benefit from the interaction and cues in order to actively participate so for example if people rely on lip reading it's easier for participants to have cameras on so to get a better read of what's been said and also it can build community in the classroom so you can put a name to a face. Okay so we'll now move on and I'll hand back over to Pete. Thanks Kat so the first question we asked our participants and it's a question we're not going to ask you I think this audience of this conference will be well aware of the technical issues that face people when participating in synchronous sessions but some of them are things that people don't always think about so one is device ownership. During the pandemic we make a lot of assumptions about device ownership and make a lot of assumptions about what young people own. Device ownership isn't that simple to talk about because it might be you have a device but there's competition for that device if you're in a home it might be something that's shared between siblings, shared between parents and children and that kind of thing so it's just saying you have access to a computer doesn't necessarily mean you have that at all times to learn with. Bandwidth concerns as well is something we've all experienced access to broadband again is a complicated one it can be a financial issue it can be a really quality issue the competition for broadband is another one people don't always realise that if you've got two people working from home that can cause you issues if you've got children in the house that might cause you issues if you've got people in the house who don't appreciate that you might need this for your learning then that bandwidth is getting hammered and switching your camera on is going to be a problem for those people I'm receiving multiple cameras from other participants even and then some people just live in locations where we can't we have colleagues who live out in the peak district and some parts of the peak district are very good for broadband and some aren't so good it just depends where you live so you know some people are not have the luxury of amazing broadband at all time and might just need to switch their camera off just to just to be able to access what they need to do and then we've got questions of digital scale and learners are out on their own in situations where they can't just pop and get the same sort of support that they might be able to get on campus and even sometimes talking through things like clearing your cache or updating your browser and things like that aren't necessarily things that everyone has at their fingertips so the technical issues are there and sometimes just being able to to access your learning without having to worry about how you share your camera can be something that's necessary for students to progress with this I'll just remember to unmute myself there and so now we're on to the non technical issues and this is where we're going to ask you some questions to interact in the comments what non technical issues have you would you or your students face when participating in synchronous sessions so if you'd just like to give us some issues that you faced or that are non technical so for example we can look at sort of home life issues or anything like that that's not to do with broadband that have stopped you participating yeah and what we'll do is as they come into the chat we'll start start talking through them and what we'll do we'll wait for them to come through is maybe just give an example of one so one example might be for example seeing into students home life is a very unusual thing to do and so for example at the moment you can see my house you can see cat's house you can see Rob's house and now this has been the case all through the pandemic these backgrounds are very familiar to anybody who's ever had a meeting with us but this is an unusual situation and looking into people's home life really really shows the equality it shows differences in people's social status it shows people different social you know income it shows other people in the house and all that kind of thing so it does show a sort of potential in equality which people might not be willing to share do you have anything in the chat you want to take out yeah there's quite a few comments coming in so we've had zoom fatigue learning differences caring responsibilities noise in the background yep I can't tell you how many times a window cleaners have managed to come around when I'm in a meeting talking and again not being in a very appropriate space messy room and bad hair day yep I can sympathize with that one Amazon deliveries taking care of children at the same time and this one looks a bit of a hybrid one people having lunch in the office behind you as well and some people have rooms at home where they can study others don't so yeah the example of my room you can probably guess it is a spare room that I'm in and which had to have a shuffle around to fit me in wearing been on camera all day we've got for example mental health students reported anxiety power cuts yep and noisy neighbors that a tutor's dog snored too loudly yep that's why my cat is outside of the room because he definitely can snore and open plan offices confidential information in the background so got a wide variety of issues there that we've all encountered streakers I don't think of experience one of those running by in the background no I mean that's something I mean you think in 18 months we would have had that at least once but you do you do hear scarce stories of people accidentally walking in on there on camera when they shouldn't definitely yep and again terrible quality wi-fi yet so pixelated people on cameras okay so I'm just going to move on to what we found when we were looking at things and so let me make the slides on so we found home life and privacy so home life can interfere with the situation and it's like we said whilst students have been encouraged back to accommodation for a lot of it not all students live in halls of residence or in a student home where they can comfortably show the cameras and so example the workspace being a window into your life as Pete said earlier and people have a right to privacy when it comes to your personal life so the certain aspects of home life where you probably don't want your classmates or professors to see and learning spaces at home in shared houses may not you might not be able to have space that was you know that would be considered a traditional learning space so for example if you're using your bedroom there might be the bed in the background and you don't want people to see into your bedroom and then we've got you know you don't need to have an excuse not to share your surroundings and as we said students didn't sign up to this point so being sort of forced maybe forced into sharing cameras and this is in a non-assessment type way we've just been you know general online learning it can be a bit almost embarrassing share into your home life and bullying and trolling as well so you know people might pick up on some inequalities just based on your home life and got mental health as well so mental health issues and I mean having your camera off doesn't mean that you're not engaging you can have your camera on and you can be looking at a different tab so it doesn't necessarily mean you're not engaging so I've just seen a comment pop up there that's made me smell someone dressed as a dinosaur in a dinosaur costume in an online lecture that's brilliant and some students might be more engaged to participate in class if they're not worried about how to look when they're speaking so for example it's a bit of a change from being in the traditional you know lecture theatre with Rose that we've all seen if you're speaking when you speak on camera sort of everyone is looking at you whereas when you're in the lecture theatre you might be speaking from the back of the room forward so you know you're seeing people back of people's heads rather than everyone's staring at you with cameras on and as we said it's a mental toll it's tiring so as we're on day three of this conference I'm sure we've all had some fatigue with cameras and being sat in front of a screen all day got inclusivity as well so it's an acknowledgement of differing economic positions so you can see inequalities based on many things so race income you might be able some people might feel uncomfortable sharing the background and like we said earlier it can reveal a social class which you know you might not want to do that for example people might have to sit on the stairs to do the work and might not want to show that it would show that you know maybe you can't afford a bigger place so we've seen in some papers where lecturers have said can you email concerns but again we wouldn't ask to do that it's quite largely unethical for people having to dive all that information and we've also got the separation between work life work and life so that has become a very blurred line at the moment so for example I'm in a situation where I'm lucky enough to have a spare room and I can just shut the door at the end of the day but we know that some people have just like you know been in the living rooms and it's no switch off safeguarding as well so you can give away details we've had people say personal information in the background that we don't want to share time difference has won as well so for example international students we've had a few people presenting from Australia and west coast of america canada and you know you might not want to be presenting in the middle of the night but showing your camera in the middle of the night when you're probably not feeling your freshest and so we've sort of said people can engage how the one without having to change who they are and so I'm going to hand over to Pete now who will follow up with the feedback and reflections that we had on the session cheers cut yeah so the session we did I think we when we run those questions that we run for you I think the technical implications very few very little of that was a surprise to people people have encountered all these technical implications I think we all have to a certain degree some of the issues we talked about in terms of accessibility and ethical issues and inclusivity people hadn't always thought through and I think this is something that I think as as practitioners we need to just remember that people just haven't thought of these issues they're new to everybody we did have a really good piece of feedback that a question which we couldn't have an immediate answer to we had to think about this which was if we record the sessions does this change the advice does this change the way it works I do think that permanence does and I think I think that is something that we need to think about I think in particular we're not really talking about the same old lecture capture kind of got arguments we're talking about these arguments about when people are in their home life and you're recording people's cameras from home and that kind of thing and so we run a second session exploring those kind of issues which was really interesting as well I think as well we just always have to say that the tutor having the camera on is a different question some of these issues do still exist and should be talked about but there are accessibility issues in terms of lip reading and things like that which are very important which might not be the same as just having 40 people's faces on screen for the less reason but I do think when doing this and talking to our academic colleagues we do have to recognise that teaching is hard when you just see a sea of switched off cameras and we have to appreciate that it is difficult and sometimes it can be about making students feel more relaxed and finding ways to alleviate some of their concerns on this and I think as well people use this as a way so we need to do it because we need no students are engaged and seeing a student's camera is a very bad way of monitoring engagement and I think it's been touched on in the chat already which which is that just seeing someone's face is pointing at a camera in their screen doesn't tell you they're engaged with you it tells they're looking at their computer and they're looking at something and that was a really good way of putting it which was present absenteeism from Rob that was a great way of putting it and so we need to find other ways and things like we've done today where we ask you to pitch in on the chat and we get that interaction from you in that way is possibly more meaningful than just seeing everybody in a big row and feeling like they're looking at us as one maybe then so camera use doesn't prove that people aren't engaging and it doesn't prove that people are engaging so I think that's a bit of a red herring in the discussion but with absolute recognition that you know it is hard to teach when you've just got a blank screen in front of you so yeah there's some of our feedback and reflection I think we're just about on time which is a miracle for us so yeah I think that's the time to go over two questions if people have any oh I forgot to say as well there is another session from Tim O'Reard and later this afternoon which we saw on the programme which covers a similar topic and we're really looking forward to seeing a different view on it so make sure you go to that too sorry I realised I was talking I was muted because my dog had been barking so I thought um rather than risk having the dog barking in that in the great tradition of cameras on or cameras off I muted myself um but we do have one question um come through so from I think U.E. is it is how I pronounce the name the question for me has been how can I ensure students are engaged or I engage students when the camera is off so any thoughts on that sort of a rhetorical question but um what what are your feelings on that yeah I think um it's a very good question a very difficult question I think it's like I said I think building tasks into the session um is is is much more meaningful I think um like I say cameras on or off doesn't really tell you that um it just says the staring at the computer screen um so it's not a great um measure anyway I think if you can build in polls you can build in tasks um like David says uh the chat box can be used really effectively we really like using the chat box when we do sessions rather than using breakout rooms and polls and that kind of thing because it's just simple and people can use it really quickly and we can react to things as they come in when we've got the luxury of having two or three presenters definitely um yeah so I think doing that uh and some really good advice coming in in the chat from practitioners as well um but yeah I do think cameras for engagement is a red herring I think we have a monitoring engagement um one question that came to my mind was um when I've been teaching this year I teach mostly post-grad just because I'm an academic developer um and actually they've been fairly good about turning on their um their cameras and I wondered whether there was a sort of an an an age or confidence thing that comes with you know between being a perhaps in FE are you coming into HE going into post-grad whether that was something that you picked up from your research yeah I don't answer that Kat yeah I mean to be fair a lot of the research is sorry it has just started an almighty thunderstorm near me so if I disappear you will know um sorry um yeah in the research it it was mainly undergraduates that we saw um but I'm sure there's more coming through I know a few people have mentioned that they're doing some studies about this situation at the moment so hopefully we might see some more research in the area um like I've got research alerts set up ready for it all so we can keep on updating as we go along um but yeah it was mainly like undergraduate and distance learners that we saw this type of research aimed at interesting thank you um I think the only other comment in the um question has been has Rob uploaded a GIF instead of turning his camera on um do you want to give a wave Rob perfect I believe that's from one of our colleagues David was it yeah Rob is Rob is our man in the chat that is his role um there is also a big lag as well I think um so if we've got any other questions I don't think we have I'll just quickly check whether anything else has come in don't think so so I'm sure um there'll be another session as mentioned on this a little bit later um so um and there will also be lots of opportunities for people to go to the other platform and have a chat about this so do get in touch I'm sure with the um with the team from Sheffield if you want to ask any more questions or follow up on any of those findings so it remains um really for me to um say thank you very much that was really really interesting thank you um and to give the um traditional round of digital applause in the chat will be super um and to say thank you very much and um it was it was great to meet you all virtually thank you very much I'll pop the um a pdf of the slides in the discord for people