Zoom Class Strategies

Read through these strategies and tips to help your Zoom Class sessions be more engaging and productive. You apply student-centered, active learning strategies in your face-to-face class sessions, and you can do that on Zoom with a few steps.

Plan Instruction

• Write out a guide or notes to help you stay on track. This can be an outline or ppt presentation to share on your screen.
• Perform skills-based activities such as solving problems or revising sentences
• Model activities or examples
• Ask prepared questions throughout the meeting to keep interaction steady
• Plan breaks for student questions throughout the meeting rather than waiting until the end.

Plan Student Activities

• Use breakout sessions with questions, problems or discussion prompts. Ask students to return to the main room and share their work TIP: Use a shared document from OneDrive for students to work on together.
• Use Zoom tools such as polling and reactions to keep students interacting and engaged

Assign Pre-Zoom Class Work

• Assign kickstarter discussion prompts. Have students share their answers and continue the discussion in Zoom.
• Research an issue and bring results to Zoom to share.
• Assign a case study and have students share how they apply concepts to a real event, condition or incident.

Assign Post-Zoom Class Work

• Reflect on ideas Bb journal
• Write a summary of the ideas covered in the meeting
• Apply concepts covered in the meeting
• If you've modeled an activity or process, assign students to do it on their own.

Plan for a Disconnection or Outage

Share a disconnection protocol for students such as:

• Rejoin the meeting
• If unable to rejoin, complete the activity and submit in Blackboard
• Look for announcement or email from me

Engaging Students through Zoom

Looking for practical tips and creative ways to make your Zoom class sessions more engaging, interesting, and fun? This post provides helpful strategies to make your synchronous Zoom class sessions a success.

Prepare for Success with Zoom

You want your class to run smoothly, so it's important to take the time to plan and setup your Zoom session with any tools you intend to use. You may want to gather together some friends or colleagues to try out Zoom features with one another. It is also important to prepare your students to make the most of Zoom.

• Set aside time in your first Zoom class to introduce the features you will use
• Plan some time for students to ask questions and explore the features
• Encourage students to answer each other's Zoom questions, as they might have a better perspective than the host of the meeting does
• Discuss any etiquette and expectations that are important to your class

Engagement Tools Built-in to Zoom

Zoom is built for group communication, but sometimes we end up talking to an audience without inviting them into the conversation, leaving them in a passive role. With a little planning, Zoom's interactive features can increase engagement -- and learning! Zoom offers many interactive tools, including the ones listed below. Each tool may require Zoom options be set in advance of your class.

Screen Share

Screen share allows participants to see the computer screen of the host or an attendee, depending on meeting settings. Instructors often use screen share for presenting content. Screen share can also be used more actively. Here are a few ideas:

• student share their screens to give presentations
• students share their screen when they have questions about an image, document, etc.
• students share a website they found, show how to navigate that site, etc.
• students share their work in a whole-class feedback session
• use the white board and annotation tools (below) when sharing screens

Learn More About Screen Sharing on Zoom, including technical details.

White Board

One screen-sharing option is to share a white board. The white board can allow everyone to sketch on the same space. Here are a few ideas:

• pose a problem (such as math, chemistry, etc.) and let students try to work it out, much like working out a problem on the board in a classroom
• invite students to draw their interpretation of mise en scène in a film class
• have students draw out a math story problem
• help students visualize geometry
• let students ask questions by typing them on the screen with the text tool
• collect feedback on course content or the class session

Learn More About the White Board on Zoom, including technical details.

Annotations

When a screen is being shared, you can use annotations on the shared content. Annotations include shapes, freehand drawings, and text. Instead of just showing content, now you can let students interact with it visually, in real-time. Here are a few ideas:

• Share a poem and let students mark favorite lines, lines they don't understand, etc.
• Share an image and let students interpret its meaning (such as in art appreciation/history, sociology, etc.) by pointing out key aspects
• Share a prepared geometry problem and let students analyze or mark-up the image to discuss how they would solve
• Share a diagram, chart, etc., and let students highlight takeaways
• Allow students to annotate as you present slides, helping you see whether they are comprehending and if there are follow-up questions

Learn More About Annotations on Zoom, including technical details.

Breakout Rooms

Breakout rooms are a way to divide the class into groups, each with its own "room." This is one of the most potent tools for student-centered, active, and engaging activities. But like any group work, a purpose should underlie the practice. Here are a few ideas:

• Let students discuss content questions before returning to the main Zoom session to share answers. You can configure many ways: Have every group address all questions; have each group focus on one question; assign only one question at a time and go back and forth between main Zoom session and breakout rooms for each question.
• Have students conduct a peer review before class, then, during class, use break out rooms for groups to explain their feedback, ask for clarification, etc. This would require defined groups for peer review.
• Host a game show in your class, like team Jeopardy or Family Feud. Assign groups, after asking each question, send students into their group breakout rooms for a predefined time limit, so they can discuss the answer they want to give once they are back in the main Zoom session. Repeat for each question.
• Assign discussion in a small group setting to allow more people to share their ideas. Provide specific topics. Ideal for any open-ended questions that invite discussion.

Learn More About Breakout Rooms on Zoom, including technical details.

Chat

The text-based chat feature is an obvious way to encourage students to help each other during a Zoom session. Here are a few ideas:

• Remind students to post questions in real-time in the chat -- and to answer each other's questions
• Appoint a few students to monitor the chat. Have them answer what they can and refer the rest of the questions to you when you pause.
• Use chat to send files or links in real-time

Learn More About Chat on Zoom, including technical details.

Polling

Polls can include single choice or multiple choice questions. Used strategically, they can successfully shift the focus to students at any time during a Zoom session. Here are a few ideas:

• ask "activation" questions at the start of a session to get students thinking about the content
• ask comprehension check questions during a session to make sure everyone is with you and to know if it's safe to move to the next topic
• perform a quick "survey" to find out what students think
• collect anonymous feedback at the end of a session to ask how the class is going

Learn More About Polling on Zoom, including technical details.

Non-Verbal Feedback

Non-verbal feedback is a tool that lets students share one of a small set of icons to communicate with the instructor. Once your students are shown how to use the feedback, just make sure to monitor that feedback when appropriate. This feedback appears in the Participants area. Non-verbal feedback isn't as active as the tools above, but provides a channel to get feedback from the class in the absence of being able to see their faces in front of you. Here are a few ideas on using non-verbal feedback:

• Make sure students know they can raise their hand if they have a question.
• Ask on-the-fly yes/no questions and wait for students to provide feedback. A good fall-back if you did not set up a poll but want to gauge something on the spot.
• Tell students that they can give you feedback on whether they need you to speed up or slow down at any time.
• Periodically ask students if they are getting the concepts. Have them respond with a thumbs up or a thumbs down.
• Consider asking students to let you know when the class needs a break.

Learn More About Non-Verbal Feedback on Zoom, including technical details.

Meeting Reactions

Similar to Non-Verbal Feedback above, meeting reactions let students share an emoji. These emojis appear where the participant's profile image, name, or video is shown. Meeting reactions disappear after 5 seconds. Like Non-Verbal Feedback, Meeting Reactions are less active and engaging than other tools. Here are a few uses:

• When a student is presenting or speaking, peers can react in real time to provide a sense of audience without interrupting the speaker
• Quick straw polls can be conducted using meeting reactions as long as the instructor is viewing all participants.

Learn More About Meeting Reactions on Zoom, including technical details.

Zoom - Options for Student Interaction in Zoom Meetings

There are several ways for students (attendees) to interact with instructors (hosts) during a Zoom meeting. Instructors control which features are available for students.

Audio and Video

Speaking (audio or video)

If students have audio or video capability (such as a microphone or a webcam), the instructor can choose to let students communication through audio or video. Instructors may wish to have all students muted when they enter the meeting. Or they may simply begin the class by announcing they will mute all microphones, to reduce chatter ad background noises, and inform students they may unmute themselves to ask a question. There is also a feature called Push to Talk that allows quick, temporary un-muting of oneself.

• Push to Talk

Why mute all?

When using Zoom for a synchronous class session, it is important everyone is able to hear the presenter without distractions. Invariably, it seems, someone in a Zoom meeting may have a live microphone that is channeling sounds into the meetings -- yawns, TV shows, music, keyboard tapping, and so on. Likewise, open mics can cause an audio echo (see below). Muting all participants while a presentation or lecture is being made improves the experience for the students.

• Zoom General Audio Topics
• Mute All And Unmute All (during meeting)
• Troubleshooting: Audio Echo In A Meeting

Why stop all participants' video?

You may choose to have attendees' video turned OFF by default in your meeting settings. This will reduce the draw on the Zoom bandwidth (which means it should keep Zoom from lagging). It can also help attendees feel more comfortable: Not everyone likes being on camera.

• Zoom General Video Topics

More Interaction Options in Zoom

Chat (text)

Zoom includes a simple text-based chat feature. This can be a great way to allow students to send questions without interrupting the flow of a presentation. Hosts can control who attendees an chat with. Learn more about where to find the chat tool, how to change settings, and how to reply to chats during a meeting.

• Controlling and Disabling In-Meeting Chat
• In-Meeting Chat

Reactions

The reactions tool allows students to post positive reactions -- a thumbs up or a clap icon. This tool also allows users to customize the skin tone of the icons.

• Meeting reactions

Non-verbal feedback

This feature allows students to use icons to communicate with the instructor, such as raising their hand to ask a question, asking the speaker to slow down, and more. It offers a way for the instructor to visually gauge how the class is doing. Instructors can also clear all feedback.

• Nonverbal Feedback During Meetings

Annotations

The annotation tool is available when the host or someone else is sharing their screen with the meeting attendees or sharing using the whiteboard tool.

• Using annotation tools on a shared screen or whiteboard

Polling

Polling allows you to gather answers to single-answer or multiple-choice questions from your students during a live meeting. This can be an excellent way of breaking up a lesson, gauging sentiment toward a topic, and more. read more about polling in Zoom meetings, including how to enable this feature. The link below also includes a video overview of Polling.

• Polling for Meetings

In-Meeting File Transfer

You can enable students to send files through Zoom during a meeting. This can be useful for a variety of activities. However, allowing file transfer also opens the door to potential abuse. Be sure to review security recommendations for Zoom meetings. Learn more about in-meeting file transfer below.

• In-Meeting File Transfer