Inverted U-shape Trajectories of Student Engagement and Teacher Satisfaction in Online Classes: Nonlinear Impact of Zoom Fatigue

Abstract

Long class periods are physically and intellectually exhausting for both students and instructors in the physical world. When that practice is applied to the digital world, things become much more difficult. When instructors teach online, many teachers discover that their synchronous Zoom lessons go on for far longer than expected. Participating in such lengthy video calls may be stressful for instructors and students. Video calls often demand more attention than in-person talks do because users have a much more restricted view of non-verbal cues, such as body movements. This makes it more difficult to absorb the information being sent. This research purposes the hypothesis of inverted U-shape trajectories in online classes.  It is postulated that there is an ideal length of online classes. The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not this hypothesis is correct and to determine the length of an online class of material posting that is ideal for use on social media platforms. The implementation of many quadratic longitudinal models has taken place. The dataset includes the length and student engagement scores and teacher satisfaction. Data are on a weekly basis for five different schools, totaling 525 samples of longitudinal datasets. These data confirm our hypothesis that increasing the duration of an online class increases student engagement and instructor satisfaction up to a certain length. However, both students' engagement and instructors' satisfaction suffer if online class sessions are made longer.