This semester, students enrolled in on-campus classes who are required to quarantine is a serious issue. Dave Alberg is teaching chemistry face-to-face this semester, but has had students in quarantine and unable to come to class in all but three meetings. He needed a solution that would allow these students to be able to participate in class and keep up with their on-campus peers while they are unable to attend in person.
Michael Decker and Randy Hoffner helped him create a recording setup that leverages the Zoom Spotlight feature and does not require special equipment. He gives the remote students a good experience, allowing them to see him work at the blackboard and hear what he’s saying clearly.
For each class session he needs to transmit, Dave sets up an iPad on a tripod in the back of the classroom, focused on the blackboard. He reports that the picture of the blackboard captured by the iPad camera is very good and students have no trouble seeing his work.
- With the iPad camera focused on the Blackboard, he logs into the teacher station computer and starts the class Zoom meeting. He uses the teaching station microphone for audio.
- He joins the Zoom meeting on the iPad, but without audio.
- Zoom Spotlight requires three participants to function. In order to access this feature in advance of the students logging in, he also joins the Zoom meeting from his phone, giving him three local participants: the teacher station, the ipad camera in the back of the room, and his phone.
- From the teacher station, he selects “Spotlight” for the iPad, and starts recording.
Zoom Spotlight forces the focus of the meeting to remain on one user, no matter who is talking or what else is happening in the meeting. This way, the students can hear the audio from the teacher station where he’s standing, but see the video from the camera in the back of the room. This also allows Dave to share a powerpoint from the teacher station and then have the video automatically return to the iPad camera when he ends the share.
Experience has shown Dave that “For the recording, it is critical that you stop sharing your screen when you finish with a projected image, otherwise the recording stays focused on the shared screen, rather than the blackboard. This is a little troublesome since I often forget in the heat of the moment.”
Dave reports that next term he is teaching a larger class, with more students than can be seated in a standard classroom. He’s going to divide the class into two teams, and have each team alternate joining the class in person. The other group will watch the lecture via Zoom.