A university professor of mathematics discovered the hardest way that silence is not always golden.
After giving a two-hour Zoom lecture, Professor Dong Wang of the National University of Singapore soon realized that none of his students heard a word because his microphone had been turned off, the local Independent reported.
Wang then asked questions to the approximately 20 students who actually stayed connected to the online class throughout the issue, and got nothing but crickets.
“No … eh … can we finish our class?” he asked.
Finally, a few students spoke up and told him he had been silent the whole time.
“We don’t know anything about you since 6:08,” one student told prof.
“Of what?” Wang asked the student, who confirmed the time. “You mean, how long did you listen?”
One student responded that he only heard a little at first, at 6 p.m., and nothing else after 6:08 p.m., when the screen froze.
A clear Wang told the class that he would repeat the whole lecture again.
Azusa Chan, one of the students, told the newspaper that the teacher was inexplicably silenced.
“Students tried all sorts of things to get their attention without being silenced and even by calling their phone number. However, he did not answer and continued with the lesson “, said the student.
“The number of participants decreased as time went on, as students could not contact the teacher and had no other resources. What you see here are more than twenty students who waited patiently for two hours until the teacher came back, ”Chan added.
The student explained that Wang was doing the whole lesson with an iPad, “so you can expect a lot of things to go wrong in this setup.”
“It simply came to our notice then [sic] his phone by his side whenever he runs a conference so he can call him in case of an emergency, ”Chan said.