How UK HE STEM Students Were Motivated to Switch Their Cameras on: A Study of the Development of Compassionate Communications in Task-focused Online Group Meetings

HE’s pandemic-driven shift to online platforms has increased social and learning disconnection amongst students. In group work/teamwork, many are reluctant switch on their cameras be more present others. Compassion in work/teamwork is defined as noticing, not normalizing, one’s own and/or others’ distress or disadvantaging taking wise action prevent reduce this. This notion of compassion being assessed the HE sector using filmed task-focused in-class work meetings identify levels both inclusivity criticality around team. study investigates use outcomes compassionate communications strategies (that were developed for offline classroom) team meetings. this mixed-methods study, two groups four international STEM students, each from a sample five UK universities, video-recorded (TGMs) before after an interactive 90-min training session (‘the intervention’) Cognitive Skills Compassionate Communications (CSCC) teams. A comparison (pre post CSCC intervention) quantitative qualitative data results indicated, post-intervention, significant increase students’ screen gaze attentiveness other, reasons why motivation had changed.