I taught a block course over the last week on urban theory. It was all on Zoom, which is hardly surprising anymore. What was new for me was that I was teaching a group of PhD students in Nigeria.

I’ve never been to Nigeria, unfortunately, and I’d love to go. Given the state of world health nowadays, however, it seems I’d have a better chance of traveling to space than getting safely on an airplane. So no luck there. The whole thing was online.

Together with my friend and colleague David Gogishvili, we spent an entire week – hours and hours each day – in virtual space with people we’ll probably never meet, in a country we’ve never seen.

It wasn’t easy.

I’ve had success on zoom before, not just lecturing, but even designing and conducting elaborate games to explore the potential and pitfalls of mega-urban development projects. I’ve been able to adjust to these new challenges pretty well, even though I obviously prefer doing it the “old fashioned way”, in person.

But here, both in-and-not-in Nigeria, the difficulty in creating rapport was immense. I’ve heard some instructors from the USA say they would never request that students turn on their cameras while on Zoom, because it would be an invasion of privacy. Honestly I’m not sure how I feel about this, and I’m certainly open to debate. But for me, I really want that bare minimum of face-to-face connection. Pull up a virtual background if you need, fine. But I want to see that you’re present in the same way that I wouldn’t want someone scrolling through their phone while you’re physically in class.

And honestly, I never before considered the technical challenges this might bring. With these students in Nigeria, their internet connections were simply too weak to handle video. It was an immediate shock to my system, in the way that you get when you’re confronted (but also surprised) by your own unspoken and unnoticed privilege.

I taught the week with screens off for them. We got the rapport as best we could, and it was a good experience overall. But it was also incredibly lonely. It would’ve been so much better to be there in person. Zoom is a magnificent tool and I’m so glad we have it. But to me, there’s nothing better than the real thing.