As online classes continue and Zoom remains the most popular tool to use, there have been discussions among teachers and faculty about ways to keep students engaged. Many students keep their camera off and their mute button on the whole class. While the preference for cameras to be turned on is understandable from teachers’ points of views, the mute button is actually needed in order to have successful classes.
There is a lot of background noise that comes from students, whether it’s the sound of a laundry machine, dish washer, or even a neighbor mowing their lawn next door. There’s also family, and even though you may be in a different room from them, sometimes their voices carry and can be heard clearly on Zoom. All of that background noise is very disruptful to the teacher and can make it hard for students to focus in class.
These kinds of disruptions have happened a couple of times in my own classes. During one of these instances when a student has forgotten to turn on their mute button, I heard their conversation with their parents in the background. While students shouldn’t be using class to talk to family, it is inevitable that problems may arise and the parents may need to speak to the student, or that there are actually no problems, but the parents speak to the student anyway and the student needs to explain that they’re in class and can’t talk right now.
Another problem is that some computers have problems with the microphone and when the mute button isn’t on, you can hear a loud buzzing sound in the background, or the student themself is muffled. A few times in class, I have heard this kind of background noise, and teachers have had to stop the class and ask which student didn’t have their mute button on as the noise was distracting and made it very difficult to teach.
Yet another example of background noise is when someone is mowing the lawn or there is construction next door. A mute button can come in handy in situations like those, when you can’t control what your neighbors do and therefore the whole class has to listen to the loud sound, which can distract both students and teachers. Overall, the mute button keeps students and teachers from hearing every single sound that comes out of each of the screens, and keeps them more focused in class.
A lot of people might not like the mute button because they believe that students will use the opportunity to play games or watch videos on their phone and not have the teacher hear it. It is true that with the mute button, it will be harder to tell if students are invested in class. But unfortunately, teachers will just have to take their students’ words for it, or their students will just have to pay attention if they want to do well in class.
The problem of the class getting distracted by different sounds and the entire class getting interrupted is bigger than if a single student isn’t paying attention. Although it makes sense to be worried about someone watching videos on their phone, it just isn’t worth it to disable the button altogether. I have been in many classes where a teacher has specifically asked a student to turn on their mute button, whether because of family or neighbors or even just the fuzzy sound that comes with bad connection.
It seems that most teachers realize the importance of the mute button as well, even if they won’t always be happy about it. With the number of distractions that can happen and the amount of unnecessary noise, having a mute button is needed in order to have a successful class.
Article by Esther Markov of Walter Johnson High School
Graphic by Charles Wang of Walter Johnson High School