After weeks of teaching on Zoom and years of research on inequality, I’ve been thinking a lot about how Zoom essentially provides windows of inequality and literally highlights unequal backgrounds of our students. This is concerning for a few reasons: 1/n

1. Literature on stereotype threat, and a related literature on identity economics suggests that identity can affect economic outcomes. One study showed that priming relatively lower social class/status students with their identity reduced their performance on cognitive tasks

2. This is worrying for Zoom lectures with required videos, where everyone can literally see your background- be it in a cramped NYC studio or on a patio garden in the Hamptons

3. Zoom is a window into socioeconomic inequality, and a worry is that it is essentially replicating the identity priming experiments from the Afridi et al. @JPubEcon paper, evoking anxieties around class that may be detrimental to student learning

4. Usually in a college classroom, we can all pretend everyone comes from similar backgrounds, not so with Zoom... So should we turn off videos?- My experience is that this reduces student engagement and may also be detrimental to learning

5. What if we all use fake backgrounds? Some students have internet/technology constraints that prevent them from using fake backgrounds

6. So what’s the solution to this? One really nice suggestion from Amanda Bayer is to simply tell students the research as a way to preempt any unconscious priming/stereotype threat: http://diversifyingecon.org/index.php/Main_Page

7. Also, maybe don’t do the timed, monitored test in front of Zoom cameras type of exams from now on given potential deleterious effects on students’ performance

8. This is a complex, sticky topic, but something that is impossible to ignore with online instruction. But if anyone else has tips/research/writing etc on how to manage this, do feel free to share #EconTwitter @cep_barnard