Visual Cues Have No Effect on Collaborative Work

It may be worth disabling video during Zoom, Teams or Google meetings and teaching, as audio cues seem to be better than visual cues for synchronizing and turn taking, a study has found.

Tomprou et al. (2021) at Carnegie Mellon, looked at group ability to solve a range of different problems, and 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 solving problems.

The authors rightly claim that this calls into doubt the conventional wisdom that you need video support, where it is often assumed that online collaboration, teamwork and communications is inferior to face-to-face equivalents as we miss the visual cues, facial expressions and body language, and so suggests that collaborative teamwork or meetings may be better with video on, as opposed to just audio.

The paper suggests that in online learning, we’d be better off leaving our videos muted. Maha Bali claims that her students and students of other teachers from K12 and Higher Education, prefer their cameras turned off. She reports they felt self-conscious, anxious about their surroundings and uncomfortable.

Others reported the cost and induced unreliability of their Internet connection when video was on. Some felt it was simply an expression of authority, surveillance and even punitive. Engineering students, where there was no discussion, as it was largely maths, felt that cameras were completely unnecessary.

Most online teaching during Covid rushed to the talking head approach, but if you think about it, talking heads can be superfluous and not necessary unless someone is introducing oneself or for specific social purposes. The idea that the teacher's head needs to be on the screen can simply be a carryover from the classroom.

What do you think? Try experimenting and turn off video for some of your online classes or meetings and observe the difference. If you see improvement, good; if not not, well, at least you save a ton of bandwidth, making communication more reliable and less screen freezing.

Read the study here.