From classrooms to Zoom rooms: preserving effective communication in distance education

ABSTRACT One of the immediate consequences of Covid-19 is that educational institutions all over the world had to make a rapid transition from frontal classroom learning to distance learning. The present study focuses on higher education and examines the implications of the transition from in-class learning to learning via the Zoom platform in an academic institute of engineering. Specifically, we focus on how the transition affected interpersonal communication. We examined the manifestation of the four media richness theory (MRT) dimensions as reported in the subjective evaluations of the lecturers and students. We gathered information from various formal and informal oral and textual sources and found that shifting away from in-class learning was detrimental to all four dimensions of interpersonal communication. Using Te’eni’s cognitive-affective model of communication, we examined whether successful educators used communication strategies to overcome potential harm to the learning process. We found a diverse use of six communication strategies to maintain mutual understanding and positive emotions. We recommend that educators apply these communicational strategies to compensate for the forced distance from the richest media, thus promoting a high level of effective learning in cognitive and affective terms.