Azhir Mahmood  🚀 🤖 🧬 🧠 🪐

Interested in the phenomenology of why some students find turning their video on in seminars so aversive. Any thoughts? If this is you, can you describe why to me in a way I'll get?

I understand why my students might not want to put cams on and I don't force them. I request it, most of them don't oblige and I don't blame them. I just wanted to raise that, from the other side, it's absolutely soul destroying to me to talk to 20 grey squares for 9 hours a week

I may be wrong, but I get the impression many lecturers aren’t digital natives and it’s more just an issue of adjustment. You have many successful Youtubers, many of whom do live videos. There are twitch streams. Heck, most grads have to do video interview to a blank screen.

Actually I am more familiar with making YouTube videos than I am with teaching. Talking to a camera in any context is tough, but the issue with teaching on Teams boils down to the fact that I have no way to judge the atmosphere in the room. There is no atmosphere in the room.

In a video or on Twitch that's fine and expected. But teaching is meant to be interactive. I need to react to the students and I can't because they are grey squares.