Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced a change in the way people work, and the location that they work from. The impact has caused significant disruption to education, the work environment and how social interactions take place. Online user habits have also changed due to lockdown restrictions and virtual conferencing software has become a vital cog in team communication. In result, a spate in software solutions have emerged in order to support the challenges of remote learning and working. The conferencing software landscape is now a core communication solution for company-wide interaction, team discussions, screen sharing and face-to-face contact. Yet the number of existing platforms is diverse. In this article, a systematic literature review investigation on virtual conferencing is presented. As output from the analysis, 67 key features and 74 obstacles users experience when interacting with virtual conferencing technologies are identified from 60 related open-source journal articles from 5 digital library repositories.
Highlights
In April 2020, 46.6% of employees were estimated to be working from home during the first wave of the UK Covid-19 pandemic [9]
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a disruptive impact in 2020, but it has created opportunities for virtual conference creators to develop solutions to support remote working, but the pandemic has acted as a catalyst to bring the notion of virtual conferencing more into the mainstream
Virtual conferencing may remain part of our work environment for the foreseeable future; with authors such as [23] and [21] arguing that virtual conferencing is becoming a preferred solution for those wishing to reduce their carbon footprint, meaning virtual conference development opportunities may extend beyond pandemics as conference participation is an essential aspect for the development of research and creation of novel ideas
Summary
In April 2020, 46.6% of employees were estimated to be working from home during the first wave of the UK Covid-19 pandemic [9]. An increase in digital meetings became a feature of the 2020 work environment with a growing role for virtual conferences [52] and a new range tools emerged to support the transition from the workplace to the home setting [10]. This move towards a conference virtualisation was already in motion prior to the pandemic. The effect of Covid-19, produced an uncalculated sharp increase in remote working within a shorter space of time than expected with the pandemic acting as a catalyst for an already increasing trend This sharp increase is evident in the Google search patterns from October 2019 to October 2020 displayed, demonstrating this sudden inflated interest in virtual conferencing solutions. A sustained increase in searches for Virtual Conference remains, continuing in an upward trend beyond the first UK lockdown, whereas a Covid-19 searches are later on the decline
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
