Flexible but languishing: What we’ve learned about virtual working and learning

Almost a year ago we wrote a column about the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (STIE) conference’s rapid pivot to an entirely virtual conference. In that column we focused on the benefits of virtual conferences that included expanded opportunities for faculty to attend conferences, decreased carbon footprint of faculty travel, and reduced travel fatigue. However, as the pandemic wore on reports of “Zoom fatigue” and feelings associated with “languishing” emerged as faculty meetings, committee and course work, and advising took place most often in online synchronous settings. Psychologist Adam Grant’s latest op-ed for The New York Times details the experience of languishing as showing up for life but living without purpose and aim. Many seemed to identify with the feeling of languishingand it has quickly become a term used to describe a common outcome of too much time on Zoom and in synchronous learning situations. Because it is predicted that virtual and remote work and learning will become increasingly common, it is critical that we use pandemic experiences to help identify best practices for asynchronous and synchronous learning to avoid burnout, disengagement, and feelings of languishment. Although synchronous is often considered a more engaging and desired course delivery mode, research indicates that asynchronous communication can increase a person’s ability to process information (Hrastinski, 2009). Additionally, despite perseptions that synchronous learning creates a stronger sense of community, one study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic found that students reported a stronger sense of community in asynchronous online courses. Findings from this study show that because asynchronous classes provide greater flexibility by allowing students to learn anytime and anywhere, they are able to choose an environment in which they have the most emotional support (Lin & Gao, 2020). These findings indicate that asynchronous learning approaches may have more potential for alleviating the languishing effect than synchronous learning. Additionally, while students report challenges in both synchronous and asynchronous learning environments such as being distracted by classmates in synchronous classes or feeling socially isolated in asynchronous online classes (Lin & Gao, 2020), students in asynchronous courses reported being more self-directed and benefited from being able to watch a videotaped lecture repeatedly and using the pause feature of video to take the time needed to search for answers to their own questions before moving forward with the recording. Given asynchronous learning affordances it is not surprising that throughout the pandemic we saw a rapid increase in self-directed learning opportunities through podcasts and webinars that provided people with just-in-time flexible learning experiences. Educators have also learned that engaging content is more important than seat time (Kennedy & Rose, 2021). While educators often plan lessons with enough activities to keep students busy from bell to bell it became clear that students could not sustain being on Zoom more than 4-6 hours a day. Therefore, educators began to focus on engaging content over seat time. For example, educators increasingly began to use collaborative tools such as breakout rooms to keep students engaged in small group work or provide peer feedback and developed team learning