NUS professor lectures for 2 hours before realising he was on mute

Singapore – A video of a National University of Singapore (NUS) professor realising towards the end of his Zoom lecture that he was muted is circulating online, providing a glimpse of some of the hiccups that occur with the world increasingly going digital.

A video uploaded by Singapore Incidents’ YouTube channel on Feb 4 shows Mr Wang Dong, an associate professor in NUS’s mathematics department, finishing his lecture with the typical call for questions.

However, no one answered him. “No…uhhh…we can finish our class?” he asked. Eventually, a few students spoke up, informing the professor that he had been on mute mode all the while.

“We cannot hear anything from you since 6:08,” said one student.
The discovery took Mr Wang by surprise. “From what?” he asked. The student confirmed the time, and Mr Wang could be seen looking beside him as if to confirm the current time.

“You mean, how long did you hear?” asked Mr Wang. A student answered that they only heard some parts at the beginning and nothing else from 6:08 onwards as his screen froze, and the audience couldn’t hear anything moving forward.

After taking a few moments to compose himself, Mr Wang accepted the reality and informed the students he would repeat the lesson some other time.

One student who was present during the lesson commented on the video and explained what happened. According to one Azusa Chan, their class started at 6 pm, and the professor muted himself at about 6:08 pm.

“Students tried all sorts of things to get his attention by unmuting and even calling his phone number. However, he did not respond and continued with the lesson,” the student noted.

“The participant count dwindled as time went on, as students could not contact the prof and had no other recourse. What you see here are 20+ students who waited patiently for 2 hours for the prof to come back.”

To those wondering how the professor couldn’t hear the students, it was explained that he was doing the entire lesson on an iPad, “so you can expect many things to go wrong on such a setup,” said Azusa Chan.

“After this incident, he left (sic) his phone beside him whenever he is conducting a lecture so we could call him in case of emergency.”/TISG

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