Help and Support everybody around the world

It is often assumed that online collaboration, teamwork and communications is inferior to face-to-face equivalents as we miss the visual cues, facial, body language and so on. His would suggest that collaborative teamwork or meetings may be better with VIDEO ON, as opposed to JUST AUDIO.

 

Yet, this fascinating paper from Tomprou et al. (2021) at Carnegie Mellon, who looked at group ability to solve a range of different problems, found something quite counterintuitive. Visual cues have no effect on collaborative work. In fact, teams without visual presence were more successful, not only in synchronising their vocal cues but also speaking in turns and on solving problems. The authors rightly claim that this calls into doubt the conventional wisdom that you need video support.

Via Elizabeth E Charles

Even as more people are logging onto popular video chat platforms to connect with colleagues, family and friends during the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanford researchers have a warning for you: Those video calls are likely tiring you out.


Professor Jeremy Bailenson examined the psychological consequences of spending hours per day on Zoom and other popular video chat platforms. (Image credit: Getty Images)

Prompted by the recent boom in videoconferencing, communication Professor Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL), examined the psychological consequences of spending hours per day on these platforms. Just as “Googling” is something akin to any web search, the term “Zooming” has become ubiquitous and a generic verb to replace videoconferencing. Virtual meetings have skyrocketed, with hundreds of millions happening daily, as social distancing protocols have kept people apart physically.

Via Elizabeth E Charles