Zoom (and other videoconferencing) fatigue was recognized early in the remote learning efforts of 2020. It is real. We have learned much about the cause and some about how to avoid the symptoms that impair communication and learning.

Early in the remote learning efforts of the spring semester last year, we found that many faculty members unaccustomed to teaching online made few adaptations to the new delivery mode other than substituting the Zoom room for the lecture hall. Of course, those who have supported and researched online learning over the past 25 years know that online pedagogies and best practices to achieve active learning are quite different online than lecturing face-to-face.

Much has been learned about Zoom and similar conferencing technologies. Zoom has updated the product monthly and even bimonthly as educators at all levels used the technology. It continues to improve. Zoom was so ubiquitous at the beginning of the COVID pandemic that is on its way to becoming an eponym, joining a long list of trademarked products and technologies that represent an entire field. However, while we use the term generically, several very powerful alternatives have emerged.

Google launched Meet, which was integrated into the hugely popular Gmail system. Daphne Kohler, co-founder of Coursera, has joined a team that launched Engageli, aimed at meeting the needs of higher education. Of course, many of the popular LMS products have proprietary meeting technologies. It is a crowded and evolving market.

The crucible of massive use of these technologies by less experienced faculty at all levels of education has exposed vulnerabilities and a host of less-than-optimum uses of online conferencing.

Zoom fatigue is a recognized condition. The popular media has picked up on this phenomenon worldwide. Some have suggested that the microdelays in audio and the extended focus on lower-resolution, poorly illuminated portrait images of participants contribute to fatigue. Almost certainly, there are a variety of such factors that contribute to the fatigue.

In “A Neuropsychological Exploration of Zoom Fatigue,” Dr. Jenna Lee of the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and the UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital writes, “The contributing factors, depending on their adjustability, serve as potential therapeutic targets to alleviate fatigue and salvage the aspects of social interaction that were once unconscious and taken for granted. Exploring alternative and more explicit ways to improve perceived reward psychologically during virtual communication may be a therapeutic approach for not only Zoom fatigue, but the mental and physical toll that comes with it.”

Dr. Jeffrey Hall, author of “Relating Through Technology,” is quoted in Psychology Today as explaining Zoom fatigue as a very real phenomenon. “Zoom is exhausting and lonely because you have to be so much more attentive and so much more aware of what’s going on than you do on phone calls.” If you haven’t turned off your own camera, you are also watching yourself speak, which can be arousing and disconcerting. The blips, delays and cut off sentences also create confusion. Much more exploration needs to be done, but he says, “maybe this isn’t the solution to our problems that we thought it might have been.” Phone calls, by comparison, are less demanding. “You can be in your own space. You can take a walk, make dinner,” Hall says.

Hall is not the only expert suggesting that wherever possible you revert to audio-only or text media to communicate. Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy in Harvard Business Review suggest several recommendations to alleviate fatigue, including more breaks, reducing multitasking and other online stimuli, as well as switching to audio phone calls or email.

So, as we move into this new year, it may be wise to resolve to reduce the number and frequency of Zoom conferences. Check yourself as you begin to create an invitation to Zoom; ask if this could be done as well via email or a phone conference call. Consider your “standing” Zoom meetings, whether they be every week or (gasp) every day. Could you take the lead on this by using less intense — and more reliable — media? What is it about the videoconference that you must have to achieve your goal?

Reducing the number and frequency of Zoom meetings may actually enhance productivity, lower frustration and anxiety, and make everyone just a bit happier in these COVID-plagued times.

This article was originally published on Inside Higher Ed’s Transforming Teaching + Learning blog. 

During the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in Asia in late 2002 and 2003 and the devastating Hurricane Katrina in 2005, online learning came to the rescue of scores of colleges and universities and tens of thousands of students.

SARS was a serious cousin of the current virus. It spread quickly across Asia and into other parts of the world, notably Canada. Claiming some 800 lives, the virus closed campuses much as COVID-19 has in the afflicted regions. U.K. universities led the way in offering online delivery of class materials to students at Hong Kong universities. It was this innovation that illuminated the path for rescuers in disasters to come.

I was studying the implications of online learning interventions during SARS when Katrina devastated nearly two dozen college and university campuses along the U.S. Gulf Coast. With my colleague Burks Oakley, then associate vice president for academic affairs for the University of Illinois, we brought the opportunity for online learning intervention to the attention of Frank Mayadas, program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This quickly expanded to engage a host of other higher education leaders at the Sloan Consortium, the Southern Regional Education Board and many others. The remarkable effort was chronicled by George Lorenzo. Ultimately, the effort dubbed “the Sloan Semester” engaged more than 100 colleges and universities in offering online classes at no charge to students displaced by the hurricane. The intent was to provide transfer credit for those students to continue their degrees from wherever they took refuge while their campuses were closed and under repair.

With relatively little notice, the pandemic swept across the country as universities were poised to begin spring break. Most campuses did not reopen after the break. With one week to prepare, remote learning was put in place, moving classes designed for campus delivery to online delivery. This, of course, continued for most campuses through the fall semester.

In each of these circumstances, the delivery of online classes was orchestrated differently. To some extent, we learned along the way. Many campuses had built the online delivery option into their business continuity plans. Many had set practices to create instances of LMS templates for each class that was to offered — populated with students, syllabi and active grade books. Although that eased the technical challenges, much remained to be done in faculty development in the pedagogy and best practices of engaging students in active online learning.

So where are we now? Higher ed enrollments were down nearly half a million students in the fall. This follows a smaller, steady drop each year over the past decade. Students have stopped out, dropped out and are pursuing a host of alternatives ranging from certificate programs and professional certifications, many of which are served by economical MOOC and at-scale programs. As Coursera notes in a recent blog post, “In 2020, a record number of people turned to online learning as a source of hope, growth, and resilience amid economic uncertainty, and campus and workplace disruptions. Since March, there were more than 69 million enrollments on Coursera — a roughly 430% increase compared to the same period last year.” And this increase comes as annual population growth in 2020 was the lowest in a century or more in the U.S., meaning the stock for future students is decreasing.

The model of higher education premised on 18-year-old freshmen, right out of high school, is coming to a close. We have an oversupply of colleges and universities to meet that need. The shakeout has begun with faculty layoffs, program cuts and deep deficits. The trends I have been following show this to be undeniable and pervasive.

That brings us back to online learning to the rescue. As the U.S. Department of Labor reports the average tenure at an employer is just 4.2 years, we are seeing an ever-increasing number of adults returning to universities for continuing and professional education to retool and upskill for new and changing careers. And, by and large, they are doing this online.

It is online learning to the rescue again, but this time the change will be far more lasting than an epidemic or hurricane. The emphasis for many universities who survive this shakeup will be to serve the “60-year learner” who returns again and again to prepare for work in an ever-changing economy fueled by artificial intelligence.

Is your university prepared for this shift? Are professional, postbaccalaureate and certification programs under development and expansion? How are you reaching the adult students who will need these programs? Who is leading this change that is at the foundation of the future of your university?

This article originally was published in Inside Higher Ed’s Transforming Teaching & Learning blog.