Evaluating the meeting solutions used for virtual classes in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

When the Ecuadorian government put the country into quarantine as a preventive measure against the Covid-19 pandemic the country’s schools and colleges had been working normally up to March 2020. On March 13th, the University of Cuenca decided to suspend face-to-face classes and changed the system to virtual online teaching. Although the teachers and students changed the teaching-learning method from face-to-face to virtual, they were not prepared to continue their education in this new educational system, in which each student’s family had different mandatory elements (e.g., an Internet connection, computer, meeting solution). However, they continued the classes through meeting solutions to continue the school year through virtual classes but without any criteria to select the most suitable meeting tool. This paper evaluates two of the most commonly used meeting solutions for virtual university classes: Webex and Zoom. We used User Experience Questionnaire and Microsoft Reaction Cards to evaluate these solutions. The results showed that Zoom was significantly more attractive than Webex, although there was no significant difference between them in the classic aspects of usability or user experience.