From classroom to Zoom room: Exploring instructor modifications of visual nonverbal behaviors in synchronous online classrooms

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, for a full academic year, Zoom rooms became classrooms for synchronous online learning at schools and universities across the world. This shift in learning space required instructors to adopt new patterns of instructional communication. Grounded in research in instructional proxemics and learning spaces, this study explores the ways that classroom instructors modified, altered, or transformed their nonverbal behaviors in the context of a digitally mediated, synchronous learning environment created through the Zoom platform. Using a survey of instructors, this study explores instructor self-reports of visual nonverbal cues evident in the typical Zoom frame: proxemics, kinesics, physical appearance, artifacts, and facial expression. Through an analysis of themes present in the data, this study identified four common themes in instructor modifications illustrative of our attention (or inattention) to nonverbal behaviors in synchronous, digitally mediated spaces of learning: animating, replicating, reciprocating, and self-monitoring. The study discusses implications of these themes for instructional practices based on instructor reflection on and application of nonverbal behaviors in synchronous online learning spaces.