Virtually Autumn: Zoom meetings

What a huge topic for me to have chosen for a single post! There is so much to write and so little time in which to write it.

Zoom and other videoconference platforms are great ways to keep students engaged, but they can also be awkward to use. Further, at this point, many already feel Zoomed out.

In the past couple of years that I've been hosting Zoom meetings, there a few useful strategies that I've developed and that I've learned from others, and those tidbits are what I share today. I'll start by introducing a few Features you might not be aware of, and then I'll finish with some Troubleshooting. Alas, these will not be full walkthroughs - the goal here is to make you familiar with some opportunities you might want to spend more time investigating!

Features

Yesterday's post discussed the use of the Polling feature in Zoom; this is a great way to get quick responses from participants using multiple-choice style questions. One caution: you should set up the poll questions before the meeting starts.

Most faculty I know plan to use Zoom for synchronous instruction and then to use Breakout Rooms, which are smaller meetings inside your main meeting that participants are divided between. The host can either assign participants to rooms manually or have Zoom divide the participants randomly among the rooms. The host can move between breakout rooms, and participants have a button they can press to request that the host join their room at any time.

The host can capture video of their Zoom meeting using the built-in Record function, which is a great option for making that meeting available to those who were not able to attend. It is worth noting that recording does not seem (at least in my hands) to capture any breakout room activity, other than breakout rooms I (the host) am in. In other words, recordings are entirely from the host's viewpoint.

The host (and others they provide the power to) can Share Screen, so that the content they select is displayed to all of the participants. This is great for lecturing (share a PowerPoint or PDF of lecture slides), for showing participants how to use software (share the screen of an application, like Excel or SPSS or R…), and for sharing the built-in Whiteboard. The shared whiteboard allows all meeting participants to collaboratively create whiteboard content in real time.

There are at least two caveats about Share Screen. First, if you are using a desktop or laptop and you have a lot of applications running, hide/minimize any that you do not intend to share. This is because the Share Screen process first asks you to identify which window on your computer you want to display to the participants…and if you have lots of applications open, that selection window, which shows thumbnails of all of your open windows, can get very busy and make it hard to figure out which window you want to share. Windows from hidden/minimized applications aren't displayed in the "window selector" screen. Second, some applications that you might want to show students have multiple "secondary" windows (like tool palettes) that won't be shown to the participants. In that case, you might opt to Share Desktop, which is essentially giving the participants the view of your entire computer monitor, as it appears to you. The caveats to this approach include a) make sure notifications are turned off (like on-screen banners showing text messages you are receiving…), b) make sure your e-mail window and others that are not relevant to your presentation are hidden, and c) that files/folders on your Desktop are ones you are OK with others seeing.

Troubleshooting

Problem

How can a teacher ensure the security of a meeting (i.e. to prevent Zoom-bombing)?

Solution

There is no single technique (or combination) that are perfect, but there are a couple of key steps. First, require a password. You share the password when you distribute the Zoom meeting invitation. This approach works most of the time, but of course one of your students could then forward the invitation to their friends, or post it somewhere on the web, and then anybody can join your meeting.

So, the next level of security is to enable the Waiting Room. This step places users in a list while they wait for the host to grant entry into the meeting. This is more work for the host, especially if the meeting is large, but you can view names and only admit those you recognize. This can be less useful for huge classes, especially where you won't remember the names of all of your students. It is also a good idea to remind students that the name they type in as their displayed name when they join your meeting should be their actual name (e.g. not a nickname, not initials)

Together, password + waiting room is a great approach.

Problem

How does a teacher help their students learn how to use Zoom, especially from afar?

Solution

Provide lots of opportunities for deliberate practice of key Zoom workflows at the start of the term. For example, take some time to let everybody practice, for example:

• using the raise and lower hand feature
• accessing and using the chat window
• muting and unmuting their microphone
• changing the screen layout from Speaker view to Grid view

Also, in your syllabus, provide direct links to support options, like these pages and videos from Zoom:

• Getting Started with iOS
• Getting Started with Android
• How to join a meeting in Zoom

Problem

The teacher wants to create breakout rooms on specific topics and then assign each student to the room they identify as interesting to them.

 

Zoom does not allow participants to self-assign to rooms; that is a power only the host has.

Solution

Before you start admitting participants from the waiting room, select the Breakout Rooms button and set up the rooms you want to have by creating them and giving them unique descriptive names. Then, place a number in front of each descriptive name. For example, rooms might be "1 Screen Sharing" and "2 Polling." It is a good idea to create the rooms before the meeting starts, so that you don't spend time during the meeting on this task.

Then, during your meeting, provide those room descriptions to the participants. I like to paste the room names into the chat window. Now ask each participant to rename themself by placing the number of the room they want to join in front of their name. For example, I would rename myself "Joe" to "2 Joe" if I want to join the room that will discuss Polling.

Once all participants have renamed, then assign participants to those breakout rooms as shown below. It is fantastic that Zoom organizes the participants in alphabetic (numerical) order, which makes it very easy to select all of the "Room 1" participants in Room 1, and so on.

Problem

I'm sharing my screen, so I can't see all of the participants as well as I normally can using the grid view

Solution

If you have another device (laptop, tablet, smartphone), then join your meeting from that device also. You can then set it (because it is a participant), to grid view. Just make sure to disable the microphone and to mute the speakers on that second device so you don't get audio feedback.

Problem

I hate to draw annotations on the shared whiteboard using my mouse or trackpad - it is just awkward

Solution

If you have a device like a tablet that is easier to draw on, then join your meeting with that device, and then make that device Co-Host (or otherwise allow it to Share Screen). You can then open the Whiteboard on the tablet and draw on the tablet screen with your finger or stylus.