Abstract:

Many of my colleagues have been dreaming about the time when they can get back to meeting face to face. COVID-19 has forced us all into days filled with virtual meetings that leave us little time for thinking, working, and taking care of personal business. But our heavy reliance on virtual meetings during the pandemic has also taught us that many of the things we thought were not possible at a distance, actually are possible. With all the terrible outcomes this crisis has brought, there has also been learning and innovations that are truly amazing.

Moving forward and thinking about a post-pandemic world, we need to take the things that worked well at a distance and incorporate them into a post-pandemic way of doing business. One of the things that will likely continue is a higher reliance on virtual meetings and web conferencing software. However, meeting virtually in a non-crisis mode will require us thinking about how to eliminate or address the fatigue associated with the seemingly unending virtual meetings. Moving forward, we need to make virtual meetings more kind and compassionate.

As we have experienced during the COVID-19 crisis, virtual meetings in higher education are used for a variety of purposes. There are synchronous class meetings, unit, department, college and university business and informational meetings, virtual workshops, team or group meetings, and task forces to name a few. While the agendas and the processes may be quite different for different meetings, the need for productivity, effectiveness, kindness and compassion remains the same.

Moving forward, it will be vital to our effectiveness to make our virtual class and other meetings more humane. That is, we need to show compassion and benevolence for all who participate in our virtual meetings. There is a lot we have learned about what works and what does not work, what is good and what is bad, and what people need and what people do not need over the past year. We need to reflect upon and codify this information and move forward in the virtual meeting space with purpose.

This presentation will describe the documented issues and concerns with virtual meetings in higher education. Best practices moving forward will be suggested and used to moderate robust discussion practices and tips for how we move forward in the post-pandemic realm.

Keywords:

Virtual meetings, webconferencing, synchronous meetings.