Evaluation of a Reinforcement Contingency to Increase University Students’ Webcam Usage During Online Classroom Instructions

During the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person classroom instruction was placed on hold and university courses transitioned to online instruction. This transition resulted in novel challenges for instructors, including reduced professor-student interactions due to limited student webcam usage. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of a reinforcement contingency on students’ use of webcams during synchronous online instruction. An alternating treatments design was used to assess the impact of a reinforcement contingency consisting of 0.5 points contingent on daily webcam usage. We also assessed the results based on how the contingency was communicated to the students (a verbal statement on the daily quiz plus a reminder on lecture slides versus a statement on the lecture slide only). The reinforcement contingency reliably increased webcam usage, but there was not a significant difference in results as a function of how the presence of the reinforcement contingency was communicated. These findings suggest that the behavior of using webcams can change with a simple reinforcement contingency.