Sweetness and Light, It Isn’t: Overcoming Zoom Problems When Conducting Writing Lab Consultations

Tags

College of Charleston, online writing help

By Dr. Bonnie Devet, Allen Duggar, Elizabeth Lathan, Sara Lingerfelt, Erin Niland, and Kristina Wasserman (College of Charleston Writing Lab)

It is an astonishing number. Daily, 300 million meeting participants are connected through Zoom (Patnaik et al.). For the writing center world, Zoom is like a hero riding in on a white stallion, coming to the rescue, helping countless centers, especially across South Carolina, by providing a means to conduct consultations with student writers. Although it is true that Zoom’s on-line services have been useful, it isn’t all sweetness and light. Difficult problems arise from Zoom usage, problems that consultants at the College of Charleston Writing Lab are facing and trying to solve. Sharing the consultants’ problems—and solutions—may help other centers as they deal with Zoom.

Mechanical Mayhem

Image with instructions for students to make an appointment for writing assistance at the College of Charleston Writing Lab.

Consider the microphone, so vital to Zooming. As one consultant reports, “No sound was coming from the client’s microphone, but she could still hear me.” Talking with clients is critical; without it, both consultants and clients feel at a loss. What did the consultant do? “We used the chat feature, and the client shared her screen with me. With this, she used her mouse and the highlighting feature to target specific areas that she wanted to focus on, and I was able to talk through potential answers to some of her questions” (Erin Niland). Workarounds, like this, are vital when conducting sessions in Zoom.

Then, there are the clients without a computer, using only a phone, so they cannot share their screens. The solution? “I had them send their paper to me, and I used the comment tool to write down the thoughts and the edits that we both came up with. I, then, sent the document back to him. That seemed to work well,” reports the consultant Sara Lingerfelt. Necessity often leads to innovation when using Zoom.

The microphone and screen are, in truth, minor problems when compared to working with clients who lack knowledge about Zoom itself. Who can blame them since, at this time, everyone is trying to master the intricacies of the program? While students certainly do not need to know about “the bowels of Zoom” (as a faculty member calls it), it is helpful to be able to share a screen, go into a breakout room, or be a co-host. Reports a consultant, “I have had a lot of students who lacked basic Zoom literacy. It’s frustrating and wasteful of the students’ time when I have to spend five or six minutes helping them to share a screen or navigate Oaks [a Brightspace learning management system] when that time could be used on their writing” (Allen Duggar). College of Charleston consultants hope that after a semester of using Zoom (both in classes and at the Writing Lab), students will have picked up some of the fundamentals. Time and experience can work wonders.

Psychological problems

image of a cartoon-style student slumped over a desk, with their head on a laptop, illustrating "Zoom fatigue." — https://roundtables.abl.org/6-antidotes-for-zoom-fatigue/

Mechanical issues are important, but some psychological difficulties inherent to conducting virtual sessions through Zoom are paramont to be handled as well. The beauty (and what now feels like a luxury) of face-to-face sessions was that the consultants could juggle several clients at once. When the College of Charleston Writing Lab operated as an in-person, drop-in lab only, the consultants would sit with a client and help the writer start a piece of writing. Then, they could go over to another client who had just walked through the door, waving a paper and seeking help with a writing project. Consultants would keep an eye on one client as they worked with another, shifting back and forth when they recognized that a client was ready to share their writings.

Zoom interferes with this process of reading of non-verbal signs. “On video, most of these [unspoken] cues are difficult to visualize, since the same environment is not shared (limiting joint attention) and both subtle facial expressions and full bodily gestures may not be captured” (Lee). Instead, consultants, who are assigned two or three clients at one time in Zoom, manage this workload using the now famous “breakout rooms.” Unfortunately, these rooms—like prison cells—do not allow a quick, searching glance over towards writers, taking in their stance and their body language in order to see when they might be ready for readers (consultants). The isolation is palatable for both clients and consultants alike.

As a director, I have encouraged consultants to explain right away to clients how the breakout rooms function, how long the clients will be in these rooms while waiting for consultants to enter, and what the clients are supposed to do while in the rooms. This approach is not ideal, but at least clients have a better sense of what to expect, lessening the feeling of being isolated.

There is also the conducting of the consultation itself. Vital parts of any writing consultations, as directors and consultants both know, are the opening moments when consultants establish rapport with clients. It’s not a time of ingratiation but of recognition that there are two humans who want to engage in Kenneth Bruffee’s famous “Conversation of Mankind.”

Unfortunately, Zoom alters these initial moments. Unlike in face-to-face work, the physical environment in Zoom is not shared. There is no sense of sitting down together, no watching a client open the laptop to call up the assignment prompt and the paper, no adapting to the “other” sitting beside one. Being online means there is no adjustment period between consultants and clients. Instead, Zoom fosters speedy interaction (true to Zoom’s name), jumping right away to the assignment and the client’s paper. Clients do not sense the need to employ the usual human interactions of a first meeting as they would if it were occurring in a physical environment. When the face of a consultant pops up in Zoom, clients think it is time to jump immediately to the writing problem at hand. As a consultant says, “Zoom can make introductions awkward” (Kristina Wasserman).

A possible solution? In virtual settings, extra effort is needed to establish the rapport so vital to opening a consultation. “It is helpful to make small talk at the beginning and always introduce yourself” (Kristina Wasserman). Through small human touches, consultants can counter the “Zoomy” quality of virtual sessions.

Finally, I have noticed that during on-line consultations, clients seem to be clinging to consulants. The clients, like astronauts tethered to a space craft as they spacewalk, are reluctant to let consultants leave a breakout room in order to help other students, perhaps fearful that they (the clients) will drift off into the ethernet. Clients cling for another reason. At some level, they sense the isolation inherent to video sessions, underscoring how they are, indeed, separated from others (Hall qtd. In Denworth). A consultant details this sensation: “I feel like the students aren’t as keen on the idea of me not giving them all of my attention since they scheduled an appointment and were expecting full one-on-one time” (Elizabeth Lathan). Unfortunately, feeling separated is inherent to Zoom work, so consultants should, at the beginning of each consultation, remind clients about what an appointment on-line entails and how long clients can work with consultants. Isolation—fostered by Zoom—cannot be eliminated, only mitigated.

Heroes on white stallions are not perfect rescuers. Using Zoom, as have so many other centers, has led to mechanical and psychological difficulties. Adjusting for problems with microphones, screens, and the lack of experience with Zoom’s fundamental operations is necessary. So, too, is it vital to handle the psychological impact created by screens. Through all these difficulties, it is important that consultants adapt in order to help clients. Through conscious effort and the deliberate analysis of video sessions, consultants and clients can begin to overcome the problems and perhaps, in spite of the difficulties, maintain a sense of community so they can provide the true Writing Lab experience so necessary to remote learning.