Scenarios, Methods, and Didactics in Teaching Using Video-Conferencing Systems and Interactive Tools: Empirical Investigation on Problems and Good Practices

The restrictions during COVID-19 pandemic resulted in gaining more experience on video conferencing systems (VCS) and continued adoption during post-pandemic teaching scenarios. Designing and installing video conferencing systems in various classroom scenarios are expensive, increase complexity, and reduce interaction opportunities unless the designs for learning activities are well-defined and well-executed. For improving the quality of contact hours, the EdViCon Erasmus + project’s aim is to explore the existing diversity of scenarios of video conferencing systems’ use, various methods, and didactics applied for engaging students using various software and VCS features and define and develop two portable VCS toolkits and training. This paper reports the empirical case of Technical University of Denmark by applying phonomyography [1] as the methodology for exploring the VCS use scenarios, methods, and didactics for exploring problems and good practices. Despite increased adoption and number of papers on VCS, the insights on the diversity of the scenarios of use during contact hours has not been sufficiently reported from the viewpoint of HCI researchers. This study applies Shuman’s [2] concept of signature pedagogies as the theoretical viewpoint for defining scenarios of the use of VCS in teaching and David Benyon’s [3] PACT (people, activities, context, technologies) framework for analysing functionalities, methods, and didactics. The causes and effects of problems with VCS-mediated contact-hour activities were grouped into seven and 12 categories respectively. Seven types of teaching environments, three types of video-conferencing systems (fixed, on-wheels, and mobile), and the various tools used for engaging students were identified.