With the rise of online meeting tools like Zoom, Google Meetings, Microsoft Teams, for uses to replace in-person meetings whether it be for school and academics or for meetings in the corporate world, they have become an integral part of work, academics, and society. These online interactions miss a key part of face-to-face interaction, the subtilties like body language and more consequentially, hand gesturing, something that has been proven to be key parts of learning (Zielinski et al.). Gestures specifically from the speaker(s) help keep the listener engaged, directing their attention to what is important and convey undertones to information that is presented. Hand gestures include things like motioning with hands, pointing, positioning of hands, whether it be crossed arms or expressive hands constantly moving in space while talking, all these different actions convey information, such as pointing to an important detail on a spreadsheet. When it comes to online meetings though, the camera tends to point at the speaker’s face, if the camera is even on, and hands tend to be outside of the view of the listeners. However, gesturing can potentially improve online meetings, and some of the bodily cues that are absent can be aided using gesturing on the screen.
To discuss the importance of Hand Gesturing, the article “Language Proficiency Impacts the Benefits of Co-Speech Gesture for Understanding Through a Visual Attention Mechanism” by Dr. Wakefield et al. explores the role of hand gesturing its impact on memory of the message based on the listener’s (Bi-lingual children) respective language proficiency. In the study, the researchers utilized actors who read two stories, in both polish and English, to Polish-English bilingual children and observed their attention to the hand gestures during the story-telling. They also then tested the recall and memory of the stories from the students. What was found in this study is the hand gesturing during the story telling aided the students more significantly who were listening to the story in which their language proficiency was weaker. The students observed the hand gestures and paid more attention to the gesturing when they were hearing a story in their less proficient language. To prove this further though, the researchers intentionally used incorrect hand gestures when conveying the story in the language that was less proficient, and the students then when asked to recall the story, recalled what the hand gesture was telling and not what the speaker was saying; showing that they were relying heavily on the hand gestures.
In a news article from UCL news, “Hand signals help overcome Zoom fatigue in online meetings” reviews two experiments which conducted a randomized control trial with one group learning to include hand gestures in their meetings and one control group without. The results of the first experiment reported that the group rated their interactions better, felt closer to those in the meeting, and reported learning more from the experience. The second experiment replicated these findings but with the two groups being hand gestures and the use of emojis and response buttons, and the findings indicated the same as the previous experiment, but emojis and response buttons seemed to impact users’ experience negatively. Another statement indicated in this news report by Professor Daniel Richardson at UCL Psychology, that the hand gesture cues given in meetings show engagement and retain attention strongly.
Consulting both of these studies by UCL and Dr. Wakefield et al, the importance of hand gesturing is highlighted prominently as being critical for retaining attention. The study by Dr. Wakefield shows the use of hand gesture in respect to learning, which implicates that viewer retention is enhanced, and this can be further seen that hand gesturing is critical in this new age of online meetings. These findings are essential since online meetings have become ingrained in society, and viewer retention is critical for learning in the online classroom space. Gesturing serves as part of the essential human interaction that is a part of learning in online spaces, as it moves beyond just screen of someone’s face, to incorporating the bodily cues of human communication. The online world is missing this critical element, and these findings highlight the importance of utilizing these elements. Future research is necessary to discover the best ways to increase viewer retention and engagement, as well as different enhancements to online platforms to increase incorporating body language.
References
Ucl. (2022, August 9). Hand signals help overcome zoom fatigue in online meetings. UCL News. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/aug/hand-signals-help-overcome-zoom-fatigue-online-meetings#:~:text=Using%20hand%20signals%20can%20help,study%20led%20by%20UCL%20researchers.
Zielinski, N., & Wakefield, E.M. (2021). Language Proficiency Impacts the Benefits of Co-Speech Gesture for Narrative Understanding through a Visual Attention Mechanism. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 43.
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