Review of Empirical Studies on Video Conferencing Platforms and Hardware for Best Practices

Abstract

Video conferencing (VC) has become invaluable in education, catapulted during the COVID19 pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organisation in March 2020. It became a service connecting a far-flung remote teaching and learning across the globe. In the process, different tools and methods serve diverse ability to keep virtual classrooms engaging and efficient. The forceful shift to incorporation of online teaching and learning resulted in a new era in education which continued even after the end of the pandemic two years later. The implication of recommendation on adoption of VC systems and good practices is to collect best practice scenarios of educational VC carried out against a backdrop of a body of literature. The aim of study is to conduct an empirical exploratory literature review of VC technologies and methods to engage students online in various classroom environments by the recent drastic changes. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) was used to include the articles to be reviewed. This paper is based on an analysis of 18 research articles with empirical studies specifically from two electronic databases, namely the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Science Direct which are open and accessible in the field of educational technology searched using the search strings relating to VC in Education. The analysis categorised the findings into three areas: 1) VC Software Platforms (2) Platforms integrated with VC Software Platforms and 3) VC Hardware. This review provides the information to enable ideating a portable VC toolkits and online applications for engaging learning experience design in higher education classrooms.