That was the big title that Rachel Gallardo presented at the ITLC Lilly Conference Online 2022. Gallardo is from Blinn College and was interested in the cognitive barriers of Zoom fatigue and solutions for online instruction. Gallardo teaches psychology and wanted to address common frustations, introduce definitions & symptoms and provide potential solutions to keep from burning out. Slides and video clips of frustration with online learning helped start the presentation. Gallardo shared the compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction model based on the professional quality of life. Compassion satisfaction was defined by Gallardo as when there is immediate reward or satisfaction for the work or task performed. Compassion fatigue was shown on a diagram with burnout and secondary trauma branching from it. Gallardo warned that it is important to “catch” an individual at early stages of compassion fatigue and before burnout. Fatigue was further explained as a “feeling of exhaustion that you experience following a video conference call.” Gallardo also shared that women tend to experience fatigue and eanxiety more than men. Gallardo stated that “Zoom fatigue is a form of burnout.” The symptoms of Zoom fatigue that were shared were all feelings I have experienced. Gallardo had a slide with Cognitive Load Theory as a title and three items: manage intrinsic load, reduce irrelevant load, and increase relevant load and the sum equals efficient learning & increased productivity.
Gallardo listed problems starting with excessive close-up eye contanct. They recommended reducing the size of the Zoom screen, the keyboards acts as a barrier between you and the screen, and using the chat can help. I had never thought about this! I use the chat feature and love it… and also tend to minimize the Zoom window. The second issue is that seeing yourself is fatiguing. Gallardo suggested hiding the self-view. Gallardo talked about tech companies working on different camera/video conferencing features and suggested using virtual filters. The third problem Gallardo presented was that video chats reduce mobility and movement helps thinking. The first recommendation was to move the camera further back to give you more flexiblity to move around. Two more recommendations were to turn off cameras and use wireless keyboards. Gallardo said that the foruth problem is that cognitive load is higher with video chats. Gallardo then talked about the importance of taking breaks, walking around, and disconnecting! I had never thought about how our brain perceives images of us on a large screen.
