Online Meeting Challenges in a Research Group Resulting from COVID-19 Limitations

Carol Nash
Additional contact information
Carol Nash: History of Medicine Program, Department of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 1A1, Canada

Challenges, 2021, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-27

Abstract: COVID-19 social distancing limitations have resulted in the utilization of hybrid online formats focused on visual contact among learners and teachers. The preferred option has been Zoom. The focus of one voluntary, democratic, self-reflective university research group—grounded in responses to writing prompts—differed. Demanding a safe space for self-reflection and creative questioning of other participants, the private Facebook group was chosen over video conferencing to concentrate on group members’ written responses rather than on visual contact. A narrative research model initiated in 2015, the 2020/21 interaction of the group in the year’s worth of Facebook entries, and the yearend feedback received from group participants, will be compared with previous years when the weekly group met in person. The aim is to determine the appropriateness of the online platform chosen compared with when the group met in person, pre-COVID-19, and suggest changes to improve future online group meetings. The results in relation to COVID-19 limitations indicate that an important aspect of self-directed learning related to trust arising from team mindfulness is lost when face-to-face interaction is eliminated with respect to the democratic nature of these meetings. With online meetings the new standard, maintaining trust requires improvements to online virtual meeting spaces.

Keywords: private Facebook group; COVID-19; self-directed learning; team mindfulness; democratic meetings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A00 C00 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/12/2/29/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/12/2/29/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jchals:v:12:y:2021:i:2:p:29-:d:677751

Access Statistics for this article

Challenges is currently edited by Ms. Karen Sun

More articles in Challenges from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().