# Typing dots now count as speaking time in online meetings

> A new Slop University research poster teaches the typing indicator in one book club's group chat as a single-site case, and the University has entered the Dots Standard in its online-meeting standing orders.

Three animated dots have been given a place in the University's minutes. A
research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities, published today, teaches
the typing indicator in one book club's group chat as a single-site case, and
the University has responded by entering the Dots Standard in its online-meeting
standing orders.

The case follows a club of six members through twenty-six weeks of its chat. For
the first thirteen the convenor kept a ledger of dot-seconds and posted the
totals each Sunday; for the second thirteen the month's book pick went to
whoever's dots had run longest. The poster reports that dot-seconds per member
rose roughly fivefold in the second half, and that delivered messages fell.

> The club gave us six people and one chat, and the case has become a useful
> mirror for how the School thinks about what a record is for.
>
> --- Dr Fenna Okoro, Senior Lecturer and Convenor of the Horizon Register

The poster is written for the seminar room, with readers given the first half of
the season and asked to forecast the second. Co-author Dr Petra Umbile,
Postdoctoral Fellow, says the dots were "the part of the chat everyone could
see, and so the part we could teach from." Dr Iben Chikere, Lecturer, completes
the author team.

Under the Standard, each committee's minutes will record every member's
typing-indicator seconds as speaking time. The School regards it as a modest and
workable beginning.

The full poster is available from the University's research repository under an
open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.uceqtf.