- Hour-long lecture sessions on Zoom can be fatiguing for both students and faculty. Consider breaking up lectures into smaller chunks and incorporate discussion questions or other activities to keep students engaged throughout the class time.
- Zoom is a new way of communicating for everyone. Consider developing a set of shared norms with your class, such as whether cameras are required or optional, whether interrupting a speaker is ok or if a raised hand is preferable.
- Be sure to pause regularly and check the chat window, to see if your students have asked questions there while you were speaking. Consider having students take turns as the question reader, who monitors the chat and has permission to interrupt you with questions from the class. A chat monitor could also keep an eye on the participants tab, letting you know if anyone has their hand raised or asked you to speed up or slow down.
- Try a chat blast. Have your students answer a question in the chat box, then have everyone submit their answers at the same time on the count of three.
- Create graphics or select images in advance that can highlight aspects of your course or the topic at hand and complement what you will say, rather than displaying a dense page of text on the screen.
- Zoom has a waiting room feature, where people joining your session are sent until you let them into the main classroom space. Enabling the waiting room gives you the chance to admit each person to the class, and perhaps to greet everyone privately as they arrive.
- Use Zoom for online office hours. Enable the waiting room to ensure privacy during your conversations with students.
- Use Zoom reaction tools for nonverbal feedback from students. Students can give you a thumbs up or show applause with clapping hands.
- Use Zoom polling to ask your students a question to check that they’re following and staying engaged with the conversation. A video about Zoom polling is available below.
You can release the poll to the students:
And then share the results:
