The paper presents research focused on virtual backgrounds in distance learning (in Italian: DaD) during the first lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic by March up to June 2020, and their impact on educational relationships. The research is based on the analysis of the answers that 1283 teachers and 1018 students gave participating in two online surveys. According to data inferred from the analysis, during the online lessons, in most cases, the teachers and students chose a specific setting background, and their choice had a significant impact on attention, motivation, and empathic involvement. So much so, the teachers changed their virtual settings to obtain better results. But the motivations for changing the backgrounds have been very different between teacher and student: 50.6% of teachers changed their background to improve the relationship with students, 44.5% to make their role more authoritative, while 70.9% of students changed the background to fully feel comfortable in watching themselves on screen. Furthermore, the survey asked teachers to choose and explain virtual backgrounds that they think could be used for improving face-to-face learning; students, to choose virtual image backgrounds that they would like behind the teachers in the classroom. More than 1,000 background images with descriptive referred captions were uploaded, which we have classified into five ontological categories. Both in the quantitative and qualitative information inferred by the analysis of such data, real different subcultures between teachers and students bring out. Research in this sense has gathered valuable information on the importance of the visual context even in face-to-face teaching. The research was also an opportunity to investigate the level of the teachers’ and students’ visual culture. The conclusions lead us to question the actual value of virtual backgrounds also in the perspective of Integrated Teaching (in Italian: DID): can they be considered only part of the setting or something more to improve the educational relationship?

Ontology of backgrounds in distance learning. Correlations between virtual backgrounds and educational relationship

Barbuti N.
2021-01-01

Abstract

The paper presents research focused on virtual backgrounds in distance learning (in Italian: DaD) during the first lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic by March up to June 2020, and their impact on educational relationships. The research is based on the analysis of the answers that 1283 teachers and 1018 students gave participating in two online surveys. According to data inferred from the analysis, during the online lessons, in most cases, the teachers and students chose a specific setting background, and their choice had a significant impact on attention, motivation, and empathic involvement. So much so, the teachers changed their virtual settings to obtain better results. But the motivations for changing the backgrounds have been very different between teacher and student: 50.6% of teachers changed their background to improve the relationship with students, 44.5% to make their role more authoritative, while 70.9% of students changed the background to fully feel comfortable in watching themselves on screen. Furthermore, the survey asked teachers to choose and explain virtual backgrounds that they think could be used for improving face-to-face learning; students, to choose virtual image backgrounds that they would like behind the teachers in the classroom. More than 1,000 background images with descriptive referred captions were uploaded, which we have classified into five ontological categories. Both in the quantitative and qualitative information inferred by the analysis of such data, real different subcultures between teachers and students bring out. Research in this sense has gathered valuable information on the importance of the visual context even in face-to-face teaching. The research was also an opportunity to investigate the level of the teachers’ and students’ visual culture. The conclusions lead us to question the actual value of virtual backgrounds also in the perspective of Integrated Teaching (in Italian: DID): can they be considered only part of the setting or something more to improve the educational relationship?
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11586/367093
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