Synchronously
“I taught a 2-hour zoom dissertation seminar (9 people) yesterday and a 75-minute zoom undergraduate ICC (19 students) today. Zoom worked well, and I had 100% attendance in both classes - this is due, in part, to my students all being in the same time zone and having access to a computer or phone, which I realize isn't the case for all classes. In my undergraduate course, I even had a guest speaker, as previously scheduled!
The feedback I've gotten from students is that zoom works really well - far more than any other platform they've tried...
Here are some features that have worked well for me in the past few days:
There is a "chat" feature, which can be used either between individuals or between the whole group. You can use this to ask a brainstorming question in which you want all of your students to offer quick short answers, or if someone wants to ask a question without disrupting the flow of discussion, or if someone is having technical issues speaking via audio but wants to participate, or if someone needs to log off and wants to say bye without disturbing the class.
As the moderator, you have the ability to mute everyone, and then unmute when you want to call on someone. I didn't need to do that because all of my students knew how to mute and unmute themselves.
There is a "raise hand" feature (there is a "participants" feature on the bottom below the screen, and if you click on it it opens up and each member can click "raise hand" or "lower hand"). Students were able to do this and I knew they wanted to join in with a question or comment.
You can "screen share," which allows you to show the students something on your screen, for example a word document, a website, a youtube video, and so on. In my undergraduate course, I shared with students the source sheet with the texts we were discussing. In my dissertation seminar, we were able to pull up the dissertation chapter and I enabled "track changes" and we edited a section of the introduction. In our next class meeting, we're looking at medieval maps and so we'll all be able to look at the images together as we analyze them.
Here are some strategies I used to conduct class that were effective:
“In advance, I explained to students the plan for the class and sent them the zoom link and call-in information. I also attached all readings and handouts, so that they had the materials in advance. I also asked them to mute themselves at the beginning of class and to arrive promptly so that we could begin right away.
“As soon as class began, I welcomed everyone and explained the key features of zoom, as I did above in this email. I asked all those students with their video off if they intentionally had video off (some did, others didn't realize that video was off and they turned it on). Then I asked them all to try the "raise hand" feature so that everyone could find it; we guided a few students until everyone got it. This whole process took 2 minutes.
“Then I asked each of them for a "check in" to see how they're doing. I called on them in the order in which they sit in class (more or less, as I remembered), and they unmuted themselves and said hi, told everyone where they were calling in from (e.g. their near-campus apartment, home, etc). Some took the opportunity to express sadness about the new circumstances and so on. This itself only took 3-5 minutes but was a really nice way of creating community in a virtual setting.
“My guest speaker and I then led an hour-long seminar, including student participation. It worked really well.
“We used the last couple minutes of class to debrief: what worked, what could be improved for next time, and so on. I reminded students to send in their upcoming assignment, and answered some questions. I also told students to email me with suggestions and reflections so that we can continue to improve the learning experience online.”
Synchronously
“I just ended a WebEx class that I thought went very well! I had 33 participants. Yesterday, I did a Bb Collaborate Ultra class with 22 participants and I really liked that one too. It is possible to do the classes by screen sharing with my students and there is a good amount of interaction via chat windows. I even used my Poll Everywhere questions like I normally do when I am teaching. I asked the students and they all thought it was a good session. Not too many technical issues.
“I am meeting students via Google Hangouts Meet app. It is very good.”