Introduction

To encourage and sustain engagement in your Zoom sessions, incorporate active learning strategies, including class discussion and other learning activities, classroom assessment techniques (CATs), and community building. To translate these elements of the face-to-face classroom for a synchronous online environment, you’ll want to master a few of the more advanced Zoom features (polling, breakout rooms, and non-verbal feedback panel) as well as incorporate some Gatorcloud (cloud-based) collaboration tools (Google Docs is a good entry point). As you gain experience, you may want to expand into other strategies and a more diverse suite of tools to engage students during class sessions.  If supported by your college's administration, consider partially flipping your class and taking some of the discussion or teaching to an asynchronous space to reduce Zoom fatigue. 

Virtual Fishbowl

Assign a group of students to solve a problem, debate a topic, or engage in a discussion while the rest of the class watches and shares their reactions via Zoom chat. 

Estimated class time: 5-15 minutes

Statement Correction

Using “comment-only” permissions, share cloud documents with student groups that have statements, proofs, or other material that contain errors and ask the groups to suggest corrections to the errors. 

Estimated class time: 5-15 minutes

Think-Pair-Share

Have students think about a shared prompt or discussion topic, then split them up into pairs or small group breakout rooms to discuss their own views on the topic. Afterwards, have each group share their thoughts back to the wider class once the Zoom breakout rooms have ended. 

Estimated class time: 15-20 minutes