Practical suggestions for teaching with Zoom
Tags: Technology, Zoom, Education, Online Teaching, Teaching

In the previous post, I laid out some essentials for creating a high-quality live online learning experience, complained about the aspects of Zoom that make this harder, and lamented that the vastly superior product made by Adobe is not being offered for free or at any type of crisis-related discount. Lots of teachers are going to have to use Zoom, so this post describes the specifics for what I’d do to make Zoom work for a high school class. The previous post gets into much more detail regarding the rationale for these decisions. My main audience is high school educators, though feedback I received from teachers of younger students makes me hopeful some of this can apply more broadly.

The end result

Having taught live online high school classes for ten years, I have a detailed sense of what I want to be happening in my class after a few weeks. I think it’s a helpful thing to have in mind, so I’ll start by describing that target class. This target would of course vary from teacher to teacher, and my own goals would change based on how things go.

Students enter the class, and they immediately open up the participants list and text chat. I welcome them either via audio or text chat as they come in, they greet me and greet one another in text chat, and that’s also where the students and I participate in some pre-class chatter. Some students get an early start on the short warm-up “Do Now” question being shown to them via screensharing.

Once class starts, I welcome the students via audio/video. I ask them to give me a green check if they hear me, which helps me confirm that they have the participants window open and is the first of many times where I’ll check that everyone is engaged. I instruct them to private message me with the answer to the initial “Do Now” question. My primary purpose is to introduce and motivate today’s topic, but I’m also confirming that they have the text chat open.

After the Do Now question, I briefly turn off screen sharing, and after my verbal prompt, we engage in the daily tradition of switching to gallery video view, and all ~25 students come on camera to wave hello. This gives them a chance to see one another and feel they’re a part of a class, and it also provides another way for me to confirm that students are present and have working webcams. Maybe today is a special day in which students are encouraged to have something special on camera, like a hat, a pet, or an interesting virtual background.

Once I share my screen again, students know to turn their videos off, and since everyone has checked off the setting to hide video rectangles for attendees with video turned off, they are now back to seeing a small video of me, the shared screen, the participants list, and text chat. This is because my preference is to have students’ attention focused on the shared content, one or two speakers, the participants list, and text chat, with the latter two letting students demonstrate to me and to one another their presence and engagement.

After some housekeeping announcements, we supplement a pre-class reading quiz with a live “reading check” activity. The pre-class quiz demonstrated to me that students are prepared, but the live activity goes further and allows them to demonstrate their preparedness to one another. I routinely remind students that this lets us keep the classroom fully flipped and let’s us focus on practicing/doing rather than me lecturing. There are lots of variations of this activity: it could be simply asking folks to put in text chat what seemed interesting or important, or it could be randomized coldcalling, provided some things are done to mitigate the stress and make it more fun (e.g. question is easy or open-ended, random selection is done in a fun way).

Students have learned the difference between the type of participation in which they “call out” using the text chat and the more formal participation that involves raising a hand and participating on video/audio. To help them, my requests for more formal participation are accompanied by a small set of verbal cues, like “let’s have a hand from someone who can tell me…” When a selected student answers and turns their video on, they appear side by side with me. While the student is answering, I can visually demonstrate to them and their classmates that I’m listening. Afterwards, I thank them for participating verbally and by using my thumbs-up/applause reaction buttons, while their classmates express support via the text chat and applause in the participants list.

Besides verbal participation from students, our class will also routinely include using Zoom’s annotation tools, polling, and completing group work in breakout rooms; students have developed familiarity with all of these tools.

In my mind, this is a working classroom. Students fluently use a combination of video, audio, text chat, participation list reactions, and annotation tools. They do so in accordance with our established classroom norms, and in so doing they demonstrate their engagement, they communicate with me and with one another, and they learn. The next few sections provide details for some initial steps I’d take to point us in this direction.

Initial preparation

Here’s what I’d do prior to meeting with students for the first time. If you’ve already started class, it’s not too late; these steps are still worth taking.

I meet with fellow teachers to discuss specifics of how we plan to succeed with Zoom and make a unified plan. If students are getting the same or similar messages across their classes, they’ll learn to succeed in the classroom much faster.

I go to my Zoom account and make sure I have the right settings for both my classroom and my account-many of the important features you can turn on/off in your room are controlled via account settings, rather than classroom settings. Starting from the default K-12 school account settings, I turn on Nonverbal Feedback and the ability to create breakout rooms; I turn off private chat messages between participants.

The Zoom profile settings that I change from their default values

I spend a couple hours getting familiar with the platform itself. Within the software, I’d like to know as much as I can about the various buttons and preferences. This is more than just learning what features I can use; because the software includes the fatal flaw of giving students full flexibility over what they’re seeing, I must know all the things they should and should not do to try to ensure they are experiencing the classroom as I intend them to.

In particular, I learn about the keyboard shortcuts that might make things easier in class, many of which I would plan on sharing with students. These are listed in the Zoom app preferences (see diagram with a partial list), and there are some very useful ones-for example, students can raise their hand using option + y, they can come on mic just by holding down spacebar, and they can use command + shift + v to turn video on and off (these are for Mac; there are similar shortcuts for PC).

Some of Zoom’s keyboard shortcuts

Controlling what students see

It’s imperative that students see the layout I want them to see, despite how hard Zoom makes this. My preferred layout is usually: a shared screen, text chat, the participants list, and the small number of folks who are on camera. Whatever your preferences are, you still want to ensure that students are consistently seeing the same thing. Here’s an example of the layout I want:

An example of the classroom layout I want all students to see, including participants list, text chat, screenshare, and videos for only folks who have video turned on.

Let’s list the student learning objectives related to wrangling the Zoom windows and layouts. By the end of our first class, students will:

Be able to open the text chat and the participants list (bonus would be to do so using keyboard shortcuts)

Notice when text chat and/or participants list are not open and correct this

Know how to enter and exit full screen mode

Know how to affix text chat and the participants list to the side of the menu when they are floating on top of the shared screen (potentially obscuring content)

Fix the screen sharing preference that (infuriatingly) causes Zoom to automatically enter full-screen mode and close both the text chat and the participants list windows anytime someone else shares their screen.

Change the video preference so that folks who are not on video will not show up in the collection of videos.

These are dry objectives, but they can be infused with some fun. Broadly speaking, my plan is to have them open and close text chat and the participants list many times, where possible making it more engaging/gamelike. What follows isn’t a real lesson plan, since I’m skipping over anything not directly related to helping kids use Zoom, but my hope is that it illustrates some ways to help get students using Zoom fluently.

Class begins, and I greet them with audio/video. Prior to doing any screensharing (which would mess things up by putting them in full-screen mode), I instruct them to click the button to open the participants list and click the green check when they have it open. As they get their green checks up, I thank them by name. After following up with students who are unable to get a green check up, I instruct the students to open text chat and greet one another. I keep track of who I’ve heard from so I can help/encourage/pester anyone who doesn’t chime in.

Now I instruct them to close both the participants list and the text chat. I might say something like, “Our Zoom intro activities over the next couple classes may seem silly, but I want to make sure we get really good at using the tool so we can learn as much as possible. Right now, you can’t see the participants list or the chat, and hopefully in a few days this will feel pretty wrong to you — something you instinctively fix.”

We repeat the whole thing: “Ok, open up text chat again (this time I don’t specify how as explicitly), and name your least favorite food.” I type my own text chat reactions to model some text chat banter, and I use audio to remind/assist folks who are having trouble. Next, I ask them to open the participants list. “Give me a red X if you don’t want me to dump this cup of water on my head, and hit the applause button if you do want me to do it. If you are having trouble finding a button, ask in text chat; maybe a classmate can help you out.” (It’s even harder than usual to maintain their interest with the entire internet only a click away, so I pull out all the stops!)

After it feels like they’ve got the hang of things, the next curveball to throw at them is automatic full screen mode. “Ok, now I’m going to share my screen with you. I’m going to show you a picture, and I want you to type in text chat to let me know what you think of the picture. Hopefully you won’t find it too disturbing.” What I share is:

Surprise cheetah cub. Photo by Marco Ponce.

Besides trying to grab and hold their attention, my hope is that I’ve created a situation where they really want to say something in chat, but thanks to Zoom’s ill-suited design, their text chat and participants list have just disappeared. Most of them figure out how to open it; I help the rest, and then we walk through the process of getting out of full screen mode, and finding the “Merge to Meeting Window” options within the text chat and participants list windows. Fortunately, now that we’ve introduced screensharing, I can share premade screenshots of these options to help guide them. I turn off screenshare and we do another round of cute animal picture sharing, this time with everyone going a bit faster as they pop out of full screen and get their participants list and text chat into the correct position.

The next phase is to get them to modify their preferences to make this all easier to manage. I share this screenshot, and have them give me a green check once they’ve unchecked the box highlighted in red.

Zoom will be less broken if students uncheck the item I’ve boxed in red.

Audio/Video

Zoom makes audio and video easy, and students probably already got plenty of practice with audio/video at the end of last year. Still, there are some learning objectives I want to address early on in the year. Students will:

Be able to come on audio and video, ideally using the aforementioned keyboard shortcuts to make it as frictionless as possible, which will take some practice.

Know when it is appropriate to come on audio/video. In our class, for example, this means they know that whenever they raise their hand and have been called on to give a verbal answer, they’re expected to be on video and answering via their mic.

Notice when their mic isn’t muted and mute it. Notice when others’ mics should be muted and mention this in text chat.

Understand that they’re expected to use headphones, to cut down on the risk of audio feedback (though Zoom seems to be good about this), and also to give them and their classmates an extra measure of privacy within the classroom, so that it’s a little harder for parents to insert themselves into the class.

Understand how to fix basic audio/video technical issues, and understand the expectations related to audio/video technical issues. This can be a delicate issue when students have insufficient resources, so you have to exercise careful judgment. In my opinion, if the excuse “my camera doesn’t work” does not result in some type of follow-up (e.g. a mandatory meeting after class with you to work on the issue, or an absence), you’ll facilitate numerous students opting out of video indefinitely.

Participants list & status indicators

The basic use of the participants list is already mentioned above-it’s a critical tool for getting confirmation from students, since it can tell you that they’ve understood something and also that they are paying sufficient attention to follow the instruction to click the green check. My objectives are for students to:

As mentioned previously, open the participants list and be able to switch it between popped out and merged with the main display window.

Use green check to answer yes/provide confirmation.

Use red X to answer no, or more commonly, to let a speaker know you cannot hear them

Use raise hand as one would do in a physical classroom, waiting to get called on, generally volunteering for something rather than wanting to interject with a question, since the latter can be accomplished via text chat.

Be able to use the keyboard shortcut for raising their hand

Update their Zoom profile settings so that their first name is what they would like to be called and their last name is an initial (they can also change this within the participants list, but then they’d have to do it every time).

Use the applause button to show appreciation for one another, and the coffee cup when they have to leave their computer.

Know that the speed up, slow down, thumbs up, and thumbs down buttons don’t have any use (but we may find a fun one, who knows).

For all of these objectives, I aim to provide explicit guidance and some fun activities to reinforce the content. For example, shortly after explaining to them the use of the red X to say “I can’t hear you,” I turn off my mic but keep pretend-talking, gesturing wildly, until a bunch of students put up red Xs. Perhaps I pull that same silly trick one more time a few minutes later. For the coffee cup away button, I might encourage us all to put the coffee cup on, go get a cup of water, and come back.

The hand raise button is going to be critical to class participation, so for that one, we’ll play numerous games in which we go through the pattern of a question being asked, some students raising their hands, students getting comfortable with “wait time” while other hands go up, and then a student being called on to speak/perform some action. Ideally, we play a game in which, after my initial question, students themselves are asking the subsequent questions, soliciting hand-raises, waiting around 30 seconds, and calling on one another.

Students are probably curious about Zoom’s bizarrely designed parallel set of status indicators, the thumbs-up and applause buttons called “Reactions” that show up over one’s video. I explain that our initial plan is not to make much use of these, since we will usually not be on video. But I may end up using the thumbs-up button if I stay on video while a student is coming on video to speak, and perhaps if the participants list applause button’s inaccessibility means students don’t use it, we’ll try to start a practice of folks all coming on camera and hitting the applause buttons while waving bye at the end of class.

Text chat

As I hopefully made clear in the previous article, text chat is a big deal. I’d like to think that folks who get their students fully on board with text chat will agree that it’s indispensable, but it is by no means easy or intuitive for anyone. By the end of the first few weeks, students will:

Master the technical mechanics of text chat-opening it, merging it with the main window, changing font size to their liking, etc.

Immediately notice when their text chat is not open.

Recognize situations in which they are intended to answer questions via text chat, vs more formal participation via a raised hand and audio/video

Routinely provide short reactions via text chat, with an emphasis on providing reactions that demonstrate that they’re paying attention to one another, e.g. “nice job!” after someone completes a problem on the board.

Know that they’re encouraged to ask questions in text chat when they’re confused, and I will either answer the questions or make note of them to answer later.

Understand what “spamming the chat” is and how to avoid it

Understand the boundary between on-topic and off-topic text chat

Know that keeping text chat effective is a collective responsibility

These are challenging/subtle objectives, so I plan to name them explicitly for my students, give reasons, and remind them that since we’re bound to make mistakes as we get the hang of it, we should be understanding. One valid approach is to give them an initial overview, periodic reminders, and watch as these behaviors gradually take hold. I prefer things that are more explicit/theatrical, so here are the activities I’ll try:

For the distinction between text chat and hand-raise/audio/video participation, I ask a series of just-for-fun questions, some with simple verbal cues suggesting a text chat response (“let me know in chat,” “type,” etc.), some with cues suggesting hand-raising (“let’s have a hand from someone who can tell me,” “mouth words,” etc.). Ideally I pass the baton to students and have them ask the questions with varying cues.

To work on problematic callouts, I first describe the undesirable situation of raising one’s hand, coming on video, and starting to give an answer only to have someone blurt it out in text chat. We’d role play it a couple times, with me asking a simple question, one student about to give an answer, another text-blurting it out just as they started speaking, and a third reminding them to refrain from blurting out answers.

“We’ve mentioned how it’s important to stop me and ask questions when you’re unsure of something, you want to confirm your understanding, or you’re simply curious. Today we’re going to practice that skill: I’m going to give a brief explanation of a physics topic now, and if I say something that warrants a question or a pause, let me know via text chat.” After that, I do about 30 seconds of a simple explanation followed by a sharp pivot to something incomprehensibly difficult, probably using obscure or fake vocabulary.

“Today we’re going to work on using text chat to show one another appreciation and that we’re listening.” I have a brave volunteer come on mic/video and pretend to give the end of a presentation I’d messaged to them. “In conclusion, I hope you’ll agree with me that Emmy Noether is the greatest theoretical physicist of the 20th century. Thank you.” The class is instructed to refrain from any response in text chat or the participants list, and we just sit there in the discomfort for 30 seconds. Then we try it again with a similar script, this time showing some appreciation in text chat and with the applause button; it feels much better. “Let’s not have anyone experience *crickets*.”

Annotation tools

Whiteboard/screenshare annotation is key for any subject in which you’d ever have students writing on the board, which is probably most subjects. This is perhaps the most fun of all Zoom skills to practice-essentially, we just engage in lots of structured play. I want students to become familiar with all the various things they can do via annotation, including:

Draw with various colors & stroke widths

Add text

Use shapes & stamps

Move, edit, and delete existing annotation objects

Pictionary is a fun way to reinforce these skills. I’ll also pull out my go-to activity of having the class decorate this MS Paint drawing of me on a boat that an artistic student once created:

A student-made MS Paint drawing we decorate together as a class

Even though these activities are fun, they all still need clearly communicated guidelines. For example, with the collaborative decoration activity, I remind students to have fun but also be considerate-don’t add things that take away from others’ contributions. I then demonstrate what I mean by drawing a huge solid rectangle over a large chunk of the image, before deleting it and turning them loose.

Conclusion

I hope this information is irrelevant within a few months, as by then folks will have gained a ton of direct experience. Perhaps the ideas I’ve shared can expedite that process and make it a bit less painful. Please let me know if you think I’ve missed anything or gotten anything wrong, and good luck with your classes.

Additional Resources