Cameras Be Damned

Note: I talk and write about trauma, and when I do, I always remind people that reading and learning about trauma brings up difficult emotions. Trauma will be discussed in this piece: please leave or take breaks from this article as needed.

A few weeks ago, a conversation began to bubble up in higher education: should we require students to keep their cameras on during synchronous, online sessions (a.k.a in Zoom)? 

The short answer is no, absolutely not, because requiring students to be on camera is contrary to everything we know about universal design for learning, about inclusive and trauma-aware teaching practices, and about making effective use of the affordances of online learning. We live in the most interesting times, in a global pandemic, and it’s really not time to equivocate. Let me use my precious time with you wisely and say quickly and clearly that forcing students to be on camera is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad policy. If you’re pressed for time and don’t feel a need to read further, you can stop after this sentence: just don’t do it. 

Here are some more details on why we shouldn’t require students to turn on their cameras, and some alternative approaches to engaging learners in live, online sessions.

Trauma-Aware Teaching

Prior to the onset of this pandemic, it was a safe bet that about two-thirds of the students in your courses had a trauma history. Trauma? Why should I care about trauma, you might be wondering. I’m not a counselor; I’m a teacher. Well, you need to care about trauma because it impacts our ability to learn and to teach. While the myriad of impacts of trauma on our bodies, brains, and minds are beyond the scope of this piece, the short version is that trauma redirects our brains’ resources away from many of the skills needed to succeed in higher education: focus, concentration, decision-making, time management, self-regulation, and various higher-order thinking skills. 

In light of the current COVID-19 crisis, that earlier two-thirds estimate I mentioned? It’s been blown out of the water. Trauma and toxic stress are universal, and they’re impacting both our ability to teach and our students’ ability to learn. Our brains are doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing during this crisis: focusing on survival. Fewer resources are available for the type of thinking processes that higher education demands. That doesn’t mean this work of teaching and learning is impossible; it means that anyone who wants the honor of calling themselves a higher educator, whether they’re a college president, teaching faculty, an advisor, or department chair, needs to be aware that trauma is the elephant in the Zoom room.

The Many Mirrors of Zoom

Image Attribution: Photo by Gabriel Benois on Unsplash

Forcing students to appear on-camera is no different than forcing them to stand in front of a mirror. Mirrors are present unique challenges for trauma survivors and for folks with mental illness. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s leading experts on trauma, writes in his book, The Body Keeps the Score, about people living with trauma who have lost the ability to recognize themselves in mirrors, an extreme form of disassociation. Imagine for a moment how terrifying it would be to stand in front of a mirror (or your webcam) and not see yourself. Is it right to require that student to turn on their webcam?

Consider a student living with depression, who has not had the energy to shower or change her clothes this week. Or the student who has been fighting off a panic attack for the past 24 hours, who needs to pace back and forth across her bedroom in order to burn off some of that nasty adrenalin. Another student didn’t sleep last night. His head is pounding from the lack of sleep. He was worrying about whether he’s going to have a job next month, and if he’ll lose his house, and if his kids are going to be okay, and he’s still reeling from the grief of his aunt’s passing, an aunt he couldn’t mourn properly at a funeral, and he spent too much time reading the news, searching for some glimmer of hope that this will all be over soon, and finding none, and this is all just too much. 

Is it right to require these students to turn on their webcams?

Are these extreme examples? Absolutely not. I’ve heard similar stories coming from many of my privileged and well-resourced colleagues. We are all living in this muck. For those who are granted less privilege and access to resources, and for those who continue to face massive health inequities, the effects are only amplified. Trauma-aware teaching practices do not ask educators to become counselors, but rather, to acknowledge the muck we’re all living in and to adapt our teaching choices to these realities, with the intention of best supporting student learning and success with a focus on compassion and adaptability. 

Requiring students to appear on camera in Zoom discounts everything we know about how our traumatized brains learn. Don’t do it.

Design for Learning, not Compliance

Image Attribution: Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion further support flexible approaches when working with students in synchronous, online sessions. 

UDL suggests that we offer students multiple means of engagement. In a Zoom classroom, that means giving students choices about whether to engage with the class on camera, via audio, through polls, collaborative Google docs, or in the chat. Demanding one type of engagement is counter to UDL principles. Forcing students on camera implies that this is the only one way to engage in our courses. As someone who’s been using synchronous, online sessions with students and faculty for almost a decade, and attending them myself as a learner, I can assure you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this is just not true.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) models ask us to consider that students might not feel comfortable or safe appearing on camera and revealing their home environments for a variety of reasons including but not limited to the impacts of poverty on their home environment or the desire for privacy around cultural or religious practices. Your institution very likely has a reference to DEI in your mission statement. Are you living that mission when you require students to appear on camera?

UDL and DEI guide us in designing courses that support all learners. Forcing students on camera is not about learning; it is too often about compliance. 

Alternatives Abound

Faculty success leads to student success and is also worthy in its own right. As such, I want to recognize some very real concerns that faculty have expressed to me about teaching live, online sessions.

“But when they’re not on camera,” they tell me, “it’s so hard to teach. I can’t tell whether or not they’re engaged. I can’t read their signals.” Some of the problematic Zoom policies we’re seeing are not born out of a focus on controlling students’ behavior, but rather, from a desire to connect with students. How can we balance that desire with our students’ varied needs?

First, let’s start by recognizing that even if students are on camera, we cannot police their engagement. I have attended countless webinars, meetings, and courses in Zoom or its competitors, been looking right into the presenter’s eyes through my webcam, and not been paying any attention whatsoever (sorry!). On the other hand, last month I attended an amazing online conference, was not on camera in most of the sessions, and was actively engaged. I contributed to discussions via audio, chat and backchannel messages. I added ideas to shared Google docs. I often had other work running on my computer to the side, and at varying times would shift away from the sessions to that work, and then back again. It was one of the most memorable and engaging conference experiences of my career, and I was off camera for 90% of it. Engagement and attention are fluid, and they don’t look the same for every learner.

A camera does not guarantee engagement. 

Encourage students to be on camera, but allow them to make that choice. Some students will choose to contribute via audio only. Maybe that’s due to trauma, toxic stress, being camera-shy, or just having a bad hair day (currently, my hair looks like something a bird lives in, and while I’m completely okay with that most days, I don’t really feel like advertising it via Zoom). Maybe they just attended another class and spent the entire time on camera, and now they’re tired and need a camera break. The reasons don’t really matter. What matters is that we treat students as human beings, and that we focus on what we can actually control: our own teaching choices. Here are a few good ones I can vouch for that can support both faculty and student success in synchronous, online sessions:

• Break up larger lectures into smaller chunks of no more than ten minutes. No one’s attention span lasts longer than that. 
• Create a structured note-taking template to help students focus on your mini-lectures. Some students enjoy taking notes in Padlet, which is a bit more playful.
• Punctuate your sessions with questions, and ask students to respond in polls or in the chat. 
• Facilitate breakout rooms to allow students to collaborate with peers in smaller groups.
• Tell stories. Brains love stories.
• Ask students how they’re doing today. Tell them how you’re doing. 
• Have students collaborate in a shared Google doc during the session. Here are some cool ideas for collaborative docs.
• Let one or more students lead the class. 
• Be willing to experiment. Let it be messy. The best stuff in life usually is. Here's a great list of Zoom activities that might be messy and fun.
• Prioritize care, compassion, and adaptability — today, tomorrow, and in the future. 

That word “higher” in higher education is supposed to mean something, and one of the things it means is that we reach beyond the tempting, band-aid solution. We reach beyond the desire to control others because we feel as if we can’t control our own circumstances. We reach toward what we know about the science of learning, toward empathy for ourselves and our students, and toward our shared humanity. We reach higher, cameras be damned.