A college professor of mathematics discovered the hard way that silence isn’t always golden.
After giving a Zoom lecture for two hours, Professor Dong Wang of the National University of Singapore quickly realized that none of his students heard a word because his microphone was muted, the local independent news center reported.
Wang then raised questions from the 20 or so students who stayed connected to the online class the entire time – and only got crickets.
“No … uhhh … we can finish our lesson?” he asked.
Finally a few students took the floor and told him that he had been standing still the whole time.
“We haven’t been able to hear from you since 6:08,” one student told the stunned Prof.
“Of what?” Wang asked the student, who confirmed the time. “You mean how long have you heard it?”
One student replied that in the beginning, at 6:00 pm, they only heard a little bit and nothing else from 6:08 pm when his screen froze.
A clearly rattling Wang then told the class that he would repeat the entire talk some other time.
Azusa Chan, one of the students, told the news agency that the professor inexplicably silenced himself.
“Students tried everything to get his attention by unmuting and even calling his phone number. However, he did not respond and continued with the lesson, ”said the student.
“The number of participants decreased as time went on, because students could not contact the professor and had no other story. What you see here are 20+ students who have patiently waited two hours for the professor to return, ”added Chan.
The student explained that Wang did the entire lesson on an iPad, “so you can expect a lot of things to go wrong with such a setup.”
‘He left after this incident [sic] his phone next to him when he’s giving a lecture so we can call him in an emergency, ”said Chan.