Students’ toughest lesson? Video conferencing etiquette
Don’t join a class video conference wearing your pyjamas. And be just as respectful to fellow students and the teacher online as you would in a regular classroom.
Those are just two of the tips from a guide to online etiquette for students posted by the Renfrew County District School Board.
Educators across Ontario are treading on new territory as two million Ontario elementary and secondary students step into virtual schooling. The threat of COVID -19 has closed schools until at least May 4, with classes moving online as much as possible.
Many issues are emerging, from students who don’t have computers or internet access to debate over which online platforms are best and how to quickly train both teachers and students to use them.
But none is as confounding as the emergence of video conferencing in elementary and secondary classrooms.
Many students, especially in the older grades, are accustomed to using online platforms like Google Classroom to receive and submit assignments, share resources and comments. They conduct research online and create slide shows and videos for class presentations.
But video conferencing isn’t commonly used by schools.
And now students and their teachers across the country are experimenting with video conferencing from their homes.
Video conferences can create a facsimile of a traditional classroom. They are an opportunity in the era of isolation to connect again: students and teachers can see and hear each other, even if only on a computer screen. But they also raise concerns about student privacy, hackers invading conferences and the security of digital information, including recorded videos.
The Renfrew school board guide offers students some common-sense advice: Set up the computer in a public area of your house, dress as you normally would for school, don’t forget to mute your microphone when you aren’t speaking and turn off the video camera if it makes you uncomfortable and just listen to the audio.
Scott Sharma, a Grade 12 student at Colonel By Secondary School, has already participated in several video conferences through the application Google Hangouts Meet. His politics class had a discussion about authoritarianism in the context of governments trying to control the spread of the novel coronavirus. Another class debated how COVID -19 is affecting Indigenous people. Next week, Sharma and two classmates will make a presentation by video conference to their English class about the book Educated, which they read before the pandemic closed schools.
Sharma said he enjoys video conferences. They help bring structure to his day. And he “soaks up” insight during discussions.
“My favourite part of class is actually being in the classroom and having that interaction with students and teachers. That’s the part of school I actually miss the most, going to class.”
Not all students turn the camera on during video conferences, said Sharma. Some keep it off because it slows down their internet speed, but others want to maintain their privacy.
“Not everyone wants everyone looking into their house, as you can imagine.”
The potential violation of privacy for both students and teachers has prompted the union representing teachers in Ontario’s Catholic school boards to advise members not to use video conferencing.
Unlike a traditional classroom, teachers can’t control what may occur during a video conference, said Liz Stuart, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association.
“You have no control over who might walk into the room, or what might be said ... you are live, in an area of your house that the child’s whole class then gets to view?”
The privacy of other people in the household could be compromised if they are inadvertently captured in the video, she said.
The union is also concerned that video conferences might exclude students who can’t participate, said Stuart. Some children might lack a computer or be sharing one with other members of the household, making it difficult to join a video conference at a particular time. She recommends that teachers instead record a video and post it, which students can view when it’s convenient for them.
The union representing Ontario English public high school teachers has not told members to avoid video conferencing, said president Harvey Bischof. “We need to rely on members’ guidance, personally and professionally.”
Like Stuart, Bischof has advised members to follow the Ontario College of Teachers’ guidelines about professionalism when using technology.
Some guidance about video conferencing from the Ministry of Education would be helpful, said Bischof.
"We need to get some up-to-date advice and guidance out to our members on this stuff. It really is a new world.
“This is all coming out kind of piecemeal, board by board, sometimes school by school. That makes it a bit of a Wild West out there.”
Bischof said one of his members told him that a class video conference on Google Meet was hacked into by strangers who made “racist, sexist and misogynistic comments” and posted a graphic image.
Instances of uninvited guests invading video conferences on the popular video conferencing app Zoom have been widely publicized in recent weeks. The phenomenon has been labelled “zoombombing”
and has included troubling instances of people taking over screens to broadcast porn or racist slogans.
Other security issues resulted in thousands of private Zoom video conferences, from therapy sessions to elementary classes, made easily searchable and viewable on the internet, the Washington Post reported earlier this month.
Zoom acknowledges it has “fallen short of the community’s – and our own – privacy and security expectations” and says it’s working to improve both, including changing settings for educators using the app to make it more secure.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board does not use Zoom, said a spokesperson. The board has a privacy agreement with Google, and data from Google Meet video conferences is encrypted, controlled and owned by the board, said a spokesperson.
Google announced on April 7 that it was introducing new features to help schools keep meetings safe, such as ensuring teachers can’t be muted or removed from conferences by students and stronger controls to prevent unwanted participants from joining.
At the Ottawa Catholic School Board, teachers have been given protocols for conducting video conferences using Google Meet. For instance, they are told to only distribute the link for a meeting 10 minutes before it starts, reducing the chance it will be shared. Parents must be informed if a teacher uses video conferencing.
That board doesn’t recommend using Zoom.
“The Board has no agreements with Zoom regarding the privacy and sharing of information as we do with Google. We are confident that Google Meet is a secure, safe and encrypted site. OCSB staff have the ability to quickly troubleshoot Google products and we do not have that same experience dealing with Zoom.” jmiller@postmedia.com twitter.com/JacquieAMiller
This is all coming out kind of piecemeal, board by board, sometimes school by school. That makes it a bit of a Wild West out there.