Online Zoom classes were disrupted by individuals spewing racist, misogynistic or vulgar content. Experts say professors using Zoom should familiarize themselves with the program’s settings.
By Elizabeth Redden in Inside Higher Education
Like many professors across the country who’ve been displaced from college campuses because of the coronavirus pandemic, Lance Gharavi suddenly found himself teaching his spring semester courses at Arizona State University online using the Zoom meeting platform. His first Zoom session for an approximately 150-student Introduction to Storytelling course went terribly wrong.
Right off the bat, he said, one of the participants used a Zoom feature that lets a user display an image or a video in the background in order to show a pornographic video.
“I didn’t notice it until a student on chat said something about it,” said Gharavi, an associate professor in ASU’s School of Film, Dance and Theater. Participants were using fake screen names, some of which he said were very offensive. “The chat window became incredibly active. Most of the comments were not on topic. They were vulgar, racist, misogynistic toilet humor. I would barely even call it humor.”
Gharavi was not alone…
Continue reading on Inside Higher Education
See also,
How to Keep the Party Crashers from Crashing Your Zoom Event
KeepTeaching.usc.edu/tools/zoombombing-resources
