Evaluation of Video Conferencing Systems for Student Social Interaction During the Covid-19 Pandemic

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the transition to hybrid teaching and remote study have had a considerable impact on Higher Education (HE) students’ social interaction, with snowballing effects on their settling into and benefitting from university life, integrating into the student community, and even mental health.
Video conferencing (VC) systems (or software/tools/apps), also known as video call or video chat systems (or software/tools/apps) allow a simulation of face-to-face meetings online, through the use of live image and sound together with other features that create a shared visual space. While not a complete solution, such systems have been a help to students during the pandemic. At the same time, they have been increasingly used in many HE courses to simulate the traditional, live delivery of course content. On top of course delivery, some educators have recognised their students’ need for social interaction, and have taken extra steps to organise online social activities for them, often also using VC systems.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to choose amongst available VC systems, and their variety of features and designs may not always fully support students’ needs from social interaction.

This project aimed to provide a guide to educators and universities, to support them in their choice of VC system for their students, but also to designers and developers such that they could build better VC systems for HE students. The following were the steps of the project:

1. Background literature on HE student social interaction during the pandemic;

2. Conduct: a) a study with students in the University of Edinburgh and b) a systematic review to extract a list of VC systems used in Higher Education, student experiences with using them for social interaction during the pandemic, as well as a set of beneficial features of VC systems for students.

3. Review more literature on beneficial sub-features of the features identified in step 2.

4. Conduct an evaluation of the VC systems identified in step 2 in terms of including the beneficial features from the same step and their sub-features from step 3; conclude on the best overall VC systems, and the best for different features;

5. Recommend improvements to the design of VC systems.
We will describe our project and share our findings on student experience, the best VC systems, and how they could be improved for enhanced student social interaction.