I upvoted for karma but downvoted for agreement. Regarding Zoom, the reasons I had not used it more extensively before COVID were:
1. Tech related: from experience with Skype in the early days of video conferencing when broadband internet was just starting to roll out, video conferencing could be finnicky to get to work. Latency, buffering, dropped connections, taking minutes to start a skype call (usually I would call relatives on my regular phone first to get the Skype call set up, and then we’d hang up our regular phones once the video call was started. Early video calls were not a straight-up improvement on audio calls, but had benefits and drawbacks and had a narrow use-case for when you specifically wanted to see the grandkids’ faces on the other side of the country or something.
I don’t think this was necessarily Skype’s fault. It was more the fault of poor internet connections and unfamiliarity with the tech. But in any case, my preconception about Zoom circa 2019, even despite widespread broadband internet, was that it would be the same sort of hassle to set up meetings. I remember being blown away when my first Zoom calls just worked effortlessly. Possibly an example of premature roll-out of a tech before it is technically mature leading to counter-productive results? This would kind of be like, if you fiddled around with GPT-1, got the impression that LLM chatbots were “meh,” and then forgot about or mentally discounted the tech until GPT-5.
2. Social/cultural related: as a history instructor, my preconceptions about scheduling video calls, or doing lectures over video calls, was that students would simply not attend or would not pay attention, and thus video calls would not be a suitable replacement for in-person meetings and lectures. While I still don’t think video calls get you 100% of the way there towards replacing the in-person experience (students definitely do goof-off or ghost during video lectures way more than in-person, I think it is more like 80% rather than the 50% or so that I had assumed before being forced to try it out on a mass scale during COVID.
These are good points. Regarding lectures, insofar as Zoom was a risky gamble that worked out better than expected, I still think an appeal to social norms is appropriate. In a world full of meetings, lectures and conferences, why wasn’t there enough experimentation to figure out that Zoom was an acceptable 80% solution rather than an unacceptable 50% solution without COVID to force the issue?
Your point about tech is a reasonable explanation, although it would turn the OP on its head. If Zoom was maturing as a technology right when COVID hit, then it might not have been “stuck” on early adoption, just made to appear that way by coincidence. We remember the sudden surge of demand, but forget that only a year or two before, video conferencing was much worse. Maybe we’d still have seen Zoomification of lectures and meetings even if there had never been COVID as Zoom’s technology matured in 2019.
This would fit with my fundamental perception that it’s extremely rare for a potentially world-changing technology to be stuck long term on early adoption due exclusively to social norms. Usually there’s a collection of issues: high costs, governance problems, moral qualms, technological shortcomings, a small market, and so on.
Why wasn’t there enough experimentation to figure out that Zoom was an acceptable & cheaper/more convenient 80% replacement to in-person instruction rather than an unacceptable 50% simulacra of teaching? Because experimentation takes effort and entails risk.
Most experiments don’t pan out (don’t yield value). Every semester I try out a few new things (maybe I come up with a new activity, or a new set of discussion questions for one lesson, or I try out a new type of assignment), and only about 10% of these experiments are unambiguous improvements. I used to do even more experiments when I started teaching because I knew that I had no clue what I was doing, and there was a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick to improve my teaching. As I approach 10 years of teaching, I notice that I am hitting diminishing returns, and while I still try out new things, it is only a couple of new things each semester. If I was paid according to actual time put into a course (including non-contact hours), then I might have more incentive to be constantly revolutionizing my instruction. But I get paid per-course, so I think it is inevitable if I (and other adjuncts, especially) operate more as education satisficers rather than education maximizers. Considering that rewards are rarely given out for outstanding teaching even for tenured faculty (research is instead the main focus), they probably don’t have much incentive to experiment either.
I do know that some departments at my college were already experimenting with “hybrid” courses pre-COVID. In these courses, lectures were delivered online via pre-recorded video, but then the class met once a week for in-person discussion. I still think that is a great idea, and I’d be totally open to trying it out myself if my department were to float the idea. So why am I still not banging down the door of my department head demanding the chance to try it out myself? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” “Don’t rock the boat,” there are a number of (probably irrational, I’ll admit) heuristics that dissuade me against being “the one” to push for it. What if it doesn’t pan-out well? What if my students hate it? It would be different if my department chair suggested it, though. Then more of the “blame” would be on the department chair if it didn’t work out. If that sounds like cowardice, then so be it. Someone with an adjunct’s lack of job security learns to be a coward as a survival tactic.
I upvoted for karma but downvoted for agreement. Regarding Zoom, the reasons I had not used it more extensively before COVID were:
1. Tech related: from experience with Skype in the early days of video conferencing when broadband internet was just starting to roll out, video conferencing could be finnicky to get to work. Latency, buffering, dropped connections, taking minutes to start a skype call (usually I would call relatives on my regular phone first to get the Skype call set up, and then we’d hang up our regular phones once the video call was started. Early video calls were not a straight-up improvement on audio calls, but had benefits and drawbacks and had a narrow use-case for when you specifically wanted to see the grandkids’ faces on the other side of the country or something.
I don’t think this was necessarily Skype’s fault. It was more the fault of poor internet connections and unfamiliarity with the tech. But in any case, my preconception about Zoom circa 2019, even despite widespread broadband internet, was that it would be the same sort of hassle to set up meetings. I remember being blown away when my first Zoom calls just worked effortlessly. Possibly an example of premature roll-out of a tech before it is technically mature leading to counter-productive results? This would kind of be like, if you fiddled around with GPT-1, got the impression that LLM chatbots were “meh,” and then forgot about or mentally discounted the tech until GPT-5.
2. Social/cultural related: as a history instructor, my preconceptions about scheduling video calls, or doing lectures over video calls, was that students would simply not attend or would not pay attention, and thus video calls would not be a suitable replacement for in-person meetings and lectures. While I still don’t think video calls get you 100% of the way there towards replacing the in-person experience (students definitely do goof-off or ghost during video lectures way more than in-person, I think it is more like 80% rather than the 50% or so that I had assumed before being forced to try it out on a mass scale during COVID.
These are good points. Regarding lectures, insofar as Zoom was a risky gamble that worked out better than expected, I still think an appeal to social norms is appropriate. In a world full of meetings, lectures and conferences, why wasn’t there enough experimentation to figure out that Zoom was an acceptable 80% solution rather than an unacceptable 50% solution without COVID to force the issue?
Your point about tech is a reasonable explanation, although it would turn the OP on its head. If Zoom was maturing as a technology right when COVID hit, then it might not have been “stuck” on early adoption, just made to appear that way by coincidence. We remember the sudden surge of demand, but forget that only a year or two before, video conferencing was much worse. Maybe we’d still have seen Zoomification of lectures and meetings even if there had never been COVID as Zoom’s technology matured in 2019.
This would fit with my fundamental perception that it’s extremely rare for a potentially world-changing technology to be stuck long term on early adoption due exclusively to social norms. Usually there’s a collection of issues: high costs, governance problems, moral qualms, technological shortcomings, a small market, and so on.
Why wasn’t there enough experimentation to figure out that Zoom was an acceptable & cheaper/more convenient 80% replacement to in-person instruction rather than an unacceptable 50% simulacra of teaching? Because experimentation takes effort and entails risk.
Most experiments don’t pan out (don’t yield value). Every semester I try out a few new things (maybe I come up with a new activity, or a new set of discussion questions for one lesson, or I try out a new type of assignment), and only about 10% of these experiments are unambiguous improvements. I used to do even more experiments when I started teaching because I knew that I had no clue what I was doing, and there was a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick to improve my teaching. As I approach 10 years of teaching, I notice that I am hitting diminishing returns, and while I still try out new things, it is only a couple of new things each semester. If I was paid according to actual time put into a course (including non-contact hours), then I might have more incentive to be constantly revolutionizing my instruction. But I get paid per-course, so I think it is inevitable if I (and other adjuncts, especially) operate more as education satisficers rather than education maximizers. Considering that rewards are rarely given out for outstanding teaching even for tenured faculty (research is instead the main focus), they probably don’t have much incentive to experiment either.
I do know that some departments at my college were already experimenting with “hybrid” courses pre-COVID. In these courses, lectures were delivered online via pre-recorded video, but then the class met once a week for in-person discussion. I still think that is a great idea, and I’d be totally open to trying it out myself if my department were to float the idea. So why am I still not banging down the door of my department head demanding the chance to try it out myself? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” “Don’t rock the boat,” there are a number of (probably irrational, I’ll admit) heuristics that dissuade me against being “the one” to push for it. What if it doesn’t pan-out well? What if my students hate it? It would be different if my department chair suggested it, though. Then more of the “blame” would be on the department chair if it didn’t work out. If that sounds like cowardice, then so be it. Someone with an adjunct’s lack of job security learns to be a coward as a survival tactic.