Hello, my name is Leah Honiball, and I’m a fourth-year Professional Communication student minoring in psychology. I was also part of this year’s Signify Digital Delivery Team. I’m 23 years old, bilingual, and born and raised in Toronto, ON. Following my graduation from Ryerson University, I’m hoping to attend law school in the fall of 2022.
Primary Research Question: Which of the Big Five personality traits (OCEAN) are most influential in motivating Ryerson University Professional Communication (ProCom) students to turn their cameras on during online Zoom lectures.
Research Inspiration: I was inspired to pursue this research question because of my minor in psychology. I’ve always had an interest in human behaviour and understanding why we behave the way we do. I thought this question would be particularly relevant to both professors and students, given the shift we’ve made to online learning this past year.
Fun Facts: When I’m not busy with school work, I loved to workout, cook healthy recipes and explore skincare! I have a longstanding passion for healthy living, and I began sharing my lifestyle practices on my blog in 2012. Today, I’ve expanded this passion to a new YouTube channel!
Summary: To investigate my primary research question, I used a mixed methodological approach to research a potential correlation between Ryerson Professional Communication (ProCom) students’ personalities and whether or not they turn their cameras on during online Zoom lectures. Students’ personalities were evaluated through a conceptual framework of personality psychology, most notably, the Big Five personality traits of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism (OCEAN) to establish enlightening findings on the prosperity of online learning for educators and students alike. Despite preexisting literature on Zoom lecture behaviour from a psychological perspective being limited, efficient methods of assessing the Big Five have well-established validity and accuracy and were used to create personality surveys. Substantiating the mixed methodological paradigm were descriptive methods and grounded theory. This paradigm underpinned the monostrand sequential approach taken to data collection to yield qualitative and quantitative outputs. Numeric and narrative data conversion supported transformative mixed methods analysis through latent and constant comparative analysis for completion and expansion purposes. A strategic negotiation between available resources and desired outcomes mitigated concerns relating to this research project’s limited time constraints and, thus, successfully determined valuable insights existing between variables explored.
