Supporting Teaching and Learning

Zoom offers many useful tools to support teaching and learning such as screen sharing, recording features and a range of annotation tools. Screen sharing allows teachers to share digital material (including video and audio) with their students and recording lessons gives learners the opportunity to revisit the content at any time and at their own pace. The annotation tools allow teachers to really engage with their teaching and learning materials by drawing, writing and highlighting anything on the screen. This helps to make the learning both accessible and visually appealing.

Best Practices:

Get them interacting. The more your participants participate in a webinar, the more engaged they’ll be. Asking people to share their personal experiences, asking questions, taking polls, or showing a little bit of humor can help “break the ice” so your audience will jump in and stay involved.

Call for questions often. If a participant comes in with his or her One Big Question, but they have to wait 90 minutes for a Q&A session at the end, they’re spending that time thinking about their question, rather than the lesson. Or, as people have grown accustomed to these long webinars where they must hold their questions until the end, it’s easy for them to drift off or start doing other things—eating lunch, checking email, updating Facebook—instead of paying attention. However, if they know and expect the presenter to be calling on them for questions throughout, they’re more likely to pay attention to what’s being said.

Break up the class into digestible sections. It can be hard to follow along for an hour and a half and retain all the information. It’s helpful to break up your webinar into sections—about 10 to 15 minutes each—that focus on one concept or topic at a time. In addition to making it easier to follow along, breaking up the session lets you take time for a Q&A session or other interaction in between, giving your audience more opportunities to discuss the content or otherwise participate.

Prep the Technology

• Start early to get everything prepared and work out any technical difficulties
  • Always have a backup plan in case of unexpected difficulties.
• Make sure everyone can hear you.
  • Use a microphone when you speak.
  • Make sure the microphone is on and close enough to pick up your voice, no matter what location you are in.
  • Don't have side conversations.
• Make sure everyone can see you (if cameras are being used).
  • Sit in good lighting.
  • Arrange yourself and the camera so you are fully visible.
  • Make eye contact with the camera.
  • In the group location, if you only have one camera, at least once turn the camera around the room (even if it's on a laptop) so everyone can be seen.
• Don't be distracting.
  • If you aren't talking, mute or turn off your microphone.
  • Avoid noisy activities like typing when your microphone is on.
• Shut off notifications on presenters computer