Analysing Students’ Reasons for Keeping Their Webcams on or off during Online Classes

Abstract

Since, in some higher education institutions, it is not mandatory for students to turn their webcams on during online classes, teachers have complained that their students have adopted this behaviour once the educational activities moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering this, the present research aimed to identify the reasons behind students’ choice to hide their faces during online classes and find possible solutions to remedy the situation to enhance the educational process’s sustainability. Thus, this article presents the results obtained by applying an online questionnaire between December 2020 and January 2021 among the students pursuing an academic degree, recording 407 responses. The results highlighted the fact that more than half of the students participating in the study reported that they do not agree to keep their webcams on during online classes, the main reasons being anxiety/fear of being exposed/shame/shyness, desire to ensure privacy of the home/personal space, and chances that other people might walk into the background. The relevance of the research, besides the scarcity of studies on the topic, is also given by the fact that finding and understanding the reasons for this behaviour are, in fact, the first steps in undertaking regulatory interventions on it.

E-Learning vs. Face-To-Face Learning: Analyzing Students’ Preferences and Behaviors

“…This topic should probably be debated in relation to several aspects, such as the students' attention and their levels of involvement in class (with the camera being turned off, they can do whatever they want), the respect for the person with whom they interact (in this case, the teacher), and the online code of etiquette (e.g., decent clothing). Another study also conducted with the students of the Politehnica University of Timisoara [11] presented the reasons why they do not want to turn on their cameras, namely anxiety, shyness, fear of exposure, and the privacy of the room in which they are. Although these reasons can be understood from a human point of view, from an educational perspective, the issue of fairness towards the other participants in the educational act and the effectiveness of the results of the didactic process could be raised.…”

“…Although e-learning has become a topic of discussion in the late 1990s, only now, during the 2020 pandemic, it seems that the world has focused almost entirely on e-learning for a longer or shorter period of time, adapting and re-adapting to the new reality. More and more studies [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] have begun to emerge in this field of research, as it has become increasingly exploratory and fertile for worldwide researchers.…”

“…With the mass transition to online education, many studies [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] have looked at the concept of e-learning. A large-scale study [2], involving no less than 424 universities around the world affected by the pandemic, shows that for areas and sub-domains, such as research, exchanges of experience between universities, scientific conferences, and, of course, the education process, there is a single solution, namely the adaptation of the whole process to the online environment.…”

“…This topic has also captured Romanian researchers' attention, who have started investigating e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have focused on subjects such as the types of platforms used in the online education process [7], the teachers, students, and parents' opinions about e-learning [8,9], the students' perceptions of the ability to learn and assimilate information in the context of e-learning [10], and the students' behaviors during online classes [11].…”

“…Not many studies have been carried out on the advantages and disadvantages of e-learning seen from the perspective of the beneficiaries of this process, that is, the students. Nevertheless, the above-mentioned studies [7][8][9][10][11] have included questions trying to capture the advantages and disadvantages of this form of education. Thus, in the study "Sustainability Analysis of the E-Learning Education System during the Pandemic Period-COVID-19 in Romania" [9], although it has focused only to a small extent on university education, the following positive aspects of online education were identified among teachers: the ease of teaching online, the flexibility of the work schedule, the adaptability to broad learning styles, the variety of tools available at hand, and the ease in monitoring and documenting teaching activities.…”