Cooking Up a Great Class: Seven Ingredients for Fun, Engaging Zoom Sessions

Whether you love it or hate it, or alternate between the two, teaching synchronously on Zoom might not be going away any time soon. Trust me, I know the struggle. The blank, silent squares. The awkward, enduring dead air. Our jokes dropping like radon balloons. The cricket-infested breakout rooms. 

Yet, I also know that many of us have experienced amazing moments with our students on Zoom. We have seen excitement and deep engagement, risk taking, mistakes and growth, and the persistence and success of plate-spinning students who might not have been able to make the pieces fit without this option.

Online synchronous teaching also offers us a lot of exciting tools we can use to facilitate dynamic, relevant learning experiences. The world is changing for our students, as should the way in which we help them to thrive within it. There’s an opportunity to reestablish and emphasize the relevance of our disciplines within this context, but we must adapt.

I know most of us can still get down with some chalk or a squeaky pen on a white board and a classroom full of students, but it’s probably time we start folding into our practices some of the ubiquitous tech tools shaping the way people communicate, work, and live in 2022. Maybe our current crisis offers us the opportunity to learn ways to shake the habitual and situate the skill sets we hope to impart within the contours of the emerging information landscape and its digital toolbox? 

7 Ingredients for Fun, Engaging Zoom Sessions

Although there isn’t a standard recipe, we can all find unique ways to slip some of the following ingredients into the instructional designs we cook up with our students.

  1. Start with thought and expression: get students engaged in a conversation, showcasing and affirming their interests and experiences before scaffolding in skill sets. I’ve learned from students that in my discipline, spending the first three weeks of the semester drilling MLA or sentence and paragraph structure before students are engaged in any meaningful conversations invariably leads to disenchantment with the class. Writing becomes a test, a hoop to jump through rather than a vital asset in their lives. Students have a lot to say and a desire for a forum. This is an asset that we should consistently leverage from day one. Give them a reason to want to further develop the skill or understanding each session hopes to impart, then drop just-in-time instruction in as needed. Long story short: contextualize the learning and try to have fun with it.
  1. Give them something to play with; make the experience durable: I love collaborating at meetings and conferences with colleagues and newly-met friends, writing interesting thoughts on whiteboards or gigantic sticky notes. It’s a great exercise for collaborative brainstorming and often sparks deeply-textured conversations–though, without fail, in my personal experience, this is cut short by time constraints and the facilitators’ itinerary. Yet, even though I have captured many of these scribbled notes with the camera on my mobile device, I literally never ever look back on these images or these ideas. They are buried in the ephemera of an ever-expanding cloud of data smog. The desire for something more durable is one of the potential benefits of synchronously learning together online (though this can and probably should be accomplished when learning in person, as well).

    When we invite students to contribute to shared online documents, they become co-creators of resources shared by the entire class. Designing activities that ask students to collaboratively make or do something creative allows them to process the concepts or practice the skills together with a sense of accountability to one another and the course. They can learn from their colleagues’ examples. Offering opportunities for personalization and creativity allows them to infuse these creations with their brilliance. Designing activities which ask them to connect those concepts and skills to interests, thoughts, experiences, and expertise that they already have makes this learning even stickier. 

    What’s more, students unable to attend a session can “make up” a missed class and share in the experience when we point them to these cataloged activities. These could be Perusall assignments, collaborative creative work created and shared with Google Slides, Padlet discussions, Google Jamboards, etc. Whatever the case, frame this collection of low stakes collaborative processing work as documentation of the oral history of your class. Emphasize the continuity and community of thought, growth, and imaginary it represents. Encourage them to use this resource as they work on more formal individual assignments. Here’s an example of an interactive Google Slide deck I created for students to collaborate around a few years back. 
  1. Many paths; don’t be too rigid with how students can participate or earn points: students are going to get confused. Not everyone is working from the same space or has access to the same tools or expertise. Sometimes their browser settings block links you share or the tools you are asking them to engage with. Cortisol can quickly rise and learning will stop, especially if we show frustration. 

    Just talk it through with the student. Tell them not to stress out and offer suggestions for getting around these challenges. Offer them alternatives to the precise instructions you have given. Encourage and applaud resilience and “finding a way” in the face of roadblocks and let them know that this is essentially the key to success in college: taking a breath, asking for help when you can, and figuring it out. 

    For example, in the sample set of activities shared above, some students have had trouble writing on the shared slides. Here’s a few ways they could meaningfully participate that I might suggest: be the editor and fact checker; use the chat and ask your partners to copy/paste your contributions on the slide for you; find images for the collages and share the links; work with your team so that you contribute your voice to the shared project; keep talking.

    Beyond that, constantly remind your students of the many paths toward participation in the larger class discussions, outside of breakout groups. Some students flat out don’t want to talk in class. We should honor this introspection while finding ways to help these students share. I was in my second year of graduate school before I felt comfortable speaking in class without being forced to–being vulnerable and sharing stuff like that from our own journeys and growth can help too. Remind students to use the chat as a backchannel space to share and ask questions, but also engage with it yourself. Whether it's a comment, a question, an emoji, or an image, let students share what they want. Mention them by name and react positively to this engagement. It will catch on. Ask them a follow up question and use your judgment. Give them time, but if they aren’t feeling it, just move on casually. No big deal. 
  1. Again . . . give them time! Honor the pause! It can be awkward, but when we are learning new things, we need time to think and process. Obviously, students are no different. Exercise your resilience to sit in the silence. I personally need to continue to work on this. 
  1. Don’t coerce or surveille; entice and encourage: students need to feel seen and honored, not policed. Giving them a chance to share their strengths before asking them to develop skills they need to improve with is a great way to do this. In terms of learning on Zoom, remind them that leadership and collaboration aren’t mutually exclusive concepts and that developing these arts in a virtual context is probably going to be increasingly valuable in the years to come. Contextualize Zoom collaboration. Remind them that a college classroom should be a safe place where we support one another as we practice and take risks to grow in confidence. Remind them that the “real world” might not be as low stakes and everybody won’t always be on the same side, so it’s probably a good idea to build that confidence and those skills now. This is just one way to help students recognize that the intrinsic value of fully engaging far outweighs a collection of participation points and their impact on their final grade.
  1. Improve your digital literacy; practice with these  tech tools: it’s really important to move smoothly from activity to activity. Mistakes will be made and we should use these as an opportunity to show ourselves grace and recover, but too many flubs can disjoint the class. Learning how to navigate effectively between different windows, documents, and Zoom tools is essential. This takes practice! I strongly suggest standardizing your practice and using dual monitors.
  1. Design human experiences with a flow; be strategic: one thing that really helps me with both points 5 and 6 is writing detailed itineraries that help me think through what I hope to accomplish with students, as well as providing a handy list of links I can quickly grab to drop into the chat for students to follow. Use down time effectively. Announcing that you are about to go into breakout rooms, then spending the next ninety seconds stressfully setting them up is not a good use of time. Same goes with sharing screens or links.

    Rather, plan ahead by carefully considering the flow of your session. For example, set up breakout groups while students are journaling and take attendance or make on-the-fly adjustments to activities while they’re in breakout groups. You are designing and facilitating a set of experiences, so consider transitions from the students’ perspective. Rhetorical awareness is essential. What are you going for? What do you want students to get out of the session? What are the best designs to accomplish this? Finally, things won’t always go as planned. If your awesome designs that you worked very hard on aren’t landing, give yourself and your students a break. It happens! Don’t force it. Afterwards, reflect and adjust.

    In the end, the best piece of advice I can give is that we should adjust our attitudes. If we aren’t excited by these modalities or if we criticize learning online this way, our students will follow suit. Our energy interacts with students in a feedback loop. They tend to mirror our vibe and we theirs. If we are excited, there’s a better chance they will be too . . . which then intensifies our own excitement and so on. The same is true if we are frustrated and annoyed. Whether it’s this or the lens by which we see our students, either as a collection of deficits or a collection of assets, the mindsets and energy we bring to our classrooms–virtual or not–can be prophetic in a self-fulfilling kind of way. 

    Setting the tone starts with us having faith in our students’ capacity and recognizing that teaching through Zoom isn’t just a shoddy stand-in for “real teaching”; it is vibrant and increasingly vital. It’s a space where our students can thrive and where we have a chance to innovate in creative ways. 

Learn with me!

Join me on March 9, 2022 at 1:00 PT for a free online workshop, Simple Teaching Strategies for Fun, Community-rich Zoom Classes. Register for free now. See you there! 

Equity, Cameras, & Online Learning: A MiraCosta College Commitment

Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash

Moving completely to distance education in the fall of 2020 challenged faculty and students in many ways. At our local Academic Senate meetings, our Associated Student Government representative would share concerns about student experiences and frustration with inconsistencies in online course delivery. These concerns enriched our conversations and mobilized us to address emergent issues. After hearing from students at Academic Senate and across the state with regard to how they were experiencing online education during the COVID pandemic, it became clear to us that we needed to do a better job of communicating expectations upfront and clarify recommended practices for faculty. We also learned about the technology challenges and/or psychological trauma that many students experience when required to turn on their cameras in their Zoom classes.

The Process

In early October, the Office of Instruction convened a small taskforce consisting of one instructional dean, one student services dean, the registrar, the faculty director of online education, and another faculty member. This group was formed to proactively develop guidance materials for faculty to best address FERPA and student privacy issues in online classes using Zoom. 

While we recognized that a policy may require much more faculty buy-in and broader discussion, there was an immediate need to give some guidance to faculty. The small taskforce developed the document, “Guidance for Synchronous Instruction at MiraCosta College to Protect Student Privacy,” in consultation with Academic Senate leadership. The taskforce reviewed examples from other colleges including College of the Canyons. The initial guidance focused on effective practices for synchronous instructional activities, specifically on camera usage, recording, and safeguarding student privacy.

By the end of October, the Chancellor’s Office published their “Legal Opinion 2020-12 Online Class Cameras-On Requirement,” which directed community college districts to adopt policies to address the issue of camera usage in online courses with respect for concerns related to personal educational privacy, access, and equity, and to ensure faculty and students are fully informed.

It became clearer as more discussion happened at Academic Senate that there needed to be a broader policy statement regarding camera usage and when it may be necessary or not. In early spring, I worked closely with the Vice President of Instruction to assemble another taskforce, which included faculty members in disciplines that require camera usage for pedagogical reasons, our faculty director for online education, student services and instructional deans, the registrar, and other faculty leaders. Luckily, we had found a recently adopted example from the Academic Senate at neighboring Palomar College to help facilitate our work. 

The Outcome

We reviewed our current practices and discussed streamlining messages and arriving at consensus on when it is appropriate to require the use of a camera. Eventually the group agreed that our fundamental premise is that cameras should be presumptively optional for live synchronous online classes and that cameras may be required in specific course sections to support course curriculum content and objectives, and/or to enhance academic integrity of assessments. We felt that students should have choices and that being upfront and transparent in the class schedule and on the syllabus about what students should expect is critical. Once a draft of the document was developed in March, it was shared in various spaces for feedback. Student leaders present in these spaces and at Academic Senate voiced both positive feedback and suggestions for improvement. This feedback was incorporated into the finalization of the document, “MiraCosta College Commitment to Equitable use of Cameras in Online Instruction and Assessment.” This document represents and clarifies the current practices around camera usage in online courses. It was developed just in time for the summer and fall registration period.

Ultimately, the goals of this document were to make our online synchronous learning environment more equitable, and to codify for students the opportunity to know expectations in advance, in order to make an informed decision early in the enrollment process. The document did not create new practices; however, it made explicit and systematic the messaging and practice across the curriculum. 

The process took longer than what I had expected, but through a true collaborative process among various stakeholders, we were able to achieve clarity and consistency for the sake of our students and their success.

Beyond Lectures: Synchronous Student-to-Student Interaction

Scrabble pieces spelling the word "zoom."

This article was originally published on the California Acceleration Project (CAP) blog.

Humanizing And Equity 

The theme of this four-part “Notes from the Field” blog series has been humanizing online teaching and learning with an equity-minded lens. Michelle Pacansky-Brock, the highly-acclaimed CVC-OEI Online Teaching and Learning Faculty Mentor, writes, “In humanized online courses, positive instructor-student relationships are prioritized and serve as the connective tissue between students, engagement, and rigor.” 

My blog on “Humanizing Your Online Courses with Flipgrid” kicked off the series by exploring ways to use video to humanize online courses and engage students, followed by my second article, “Student-to-Student Interaction Online (Asynchronous).” This article centers on live student engagement using Zoom. Stay tuned for my last article in the series, which will be an examination of instructor-to-student interaction in “Conveying Care Online.” 

Not Just Lectures 

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an unprecedented surge in synchronous online teaching and learning. Synchronous instruction is popular because it provides the opportunity for students to interact with each other and with their instructor in real time, much as they might in an on-campus class. Because it most closely mirrors in-person teaching, many instructors who did not have much (or any) online teaching experience prior to the pandemic have gravitated toward this style of teaching, and most instructors now know how to share their screen and deliver a lecture. 

But Zoom also provides many tools to go beyond lecturing and foster students’ higher order thinking skills, something that is critical to equity-minded teaching. 

“School practices that emphasize lecture and rote memorization are part of what Martin Haberman calls a ‘pedagogy of poverty’ that sets students up...with outdated skills and shallow knowledge,” writes Zaretta Hammond in Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. “They are able to regurgitate facts and concepts but have difficulty applying this knowledge in new and practical ways. To be able to direct their own lives and define success for themselves, they must be able to think critically and creatively” (14). 

My goal in this blog is to share a sample lesson plan and other tips that promote interaction, engagement, and deeper learning when using Zoom. Following a consistent lesson routine helps students feel more comfortable and open to learning since they can anticipate how the class meetings will progress. 

Many of the following strategies require that you enable these Zoom settings and prepare materials in advance, so plan ahead. 

Getting Started 

Early in the semester, set the tone for interaction by establishing your Zoom culture and norms. Invite your students to co-create a few community agreements for participation and reinforce them throughout the semester. These might include norming expectations for unmuting mics and speaking during class, as well as non-verbal interactions. Carving out the time to do this will pay off in better engagement over the semester. 

Class norms should not include requiring students to turn on their cameras. These requirements counter the humanizing principles of having empathy as well as respecting and trusting students. They also violate legal guidance from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, which states, “Districts should adopt policies strictly limiting or prohibiting faculty from instituting cameras-on requirements in order to protect against violations of student privacy...and ensure compliance with FERPA, California’s student privacy law, and federal disability laws” (7). 

It can be challenging for instructors to teach a class to black boxes on Zoom, so consider showing students how to use a virtual background and how to add their profile photo to connect names with faces. Instead of mandating cameras on, offer students an invitation like, “I invite you to turn on your video if you can. If not, I understand.” 

Sample Lesson Plan 

Check-Ins 

To encourage community, have everyone check-in at the beginning of your Zoom meetings. This communicates to your students that your class will not be a passive experience similar to watching TV but instead, an engaging learning session requiring their attention and active participation. 

A grid of emojis representing various emotional states with the question at the top, "How do you feel today?"

Check-ins or warm-ups can be as simple as asking students to type a word, number, or emoji in the chat to describe how they are doing today or how they are feeling about an upcoming essay or exam. 

If students are not participating in the check-in, try a more structured and easy way for them to interact. For example, you might consider screensharing emojis or animal faces that are numbered to prompt them to share which image corresponds with their current mood. 

Providing an opportunity for more creative student contributions can also boost participation. For instance, ask students to find and paste a meme or gif into Google Slides or Google Jamboards to describe how they are doing today, such as in Esther Park’s Jamboard check-in template. After students get used to this routine, they tend to come prepared with fun contributions. 

Short Direct Instruction with Interaction 

Direct instruction, a.k.a. “lecture,” is useful if your goal is to teach a new concept or to demonstrate a skill, but keep it short. Studies show that the average attention span for video conferencing is only around 10 minutes. I only “teach” the most challenging or confusing concepts through a short presentation, and I chunk this instruction with student participation every few minutes to keep them focused and check for understanding. 

Here are some tools besides chat that you can use to make direct instruction interactive: 

Zoom interface showing Reactions including applause, thumbs up, heart, laughing face, surprised face, celebration, green check, red x, slow down, go faster, and raise hand.

Student-to-Student Interaction in Breakout Rooms 

After direct instruction, provide an opportunity for students to practice higher order thinking in breakout rooms. Give them a task that warrants group interaction and deeper thinking by requiring them to apply, analyze, evaluate or create using what they learned. If students have a well-defined deliverable, they are more likely to engage and collaborate. For example, the task might require students to add to a Padlet, contribute to shared Google SlidesDocs, or Jamboards, or you could use the annotation tools in Zoom and ask students to collaboratively mark-up texts or solve problems. 

You will need to adjust your Zoom settings for breakout room activities. John Montgomery’s Zoom blog “All You Need to Know About Using Zoom Breakout Rooms” explains your options and will help you think through the nuances of how you want to structure the interaction. Will you pre-assign groups or allow students to self-select into a group? Will the group work be timed? Will students be allowed to rejoin the whole class session at any time?   

For example, before the Zoom meeting I set-up breakout rooms that correspond to skills required on an upcoming essay assignment: thesis, introduction, citations, MLA, and conclusion. I ask students to choose their room based on what they need to work on. On a shared Google Jamboard are links to my class resources on each topic. When in the breakout room, they can access and discuss these resources and add their questions and ideas to Jamboard’s collaborative digital whiteboard using images, sticky notes, text, or drawings. For some fantastic activities and templates using Jamboard, visit Matt Miller’s Google Jamboard resources

When students work in groups, sometimes they may be hesitant to engage in the task or to participate. Here are some strategies that may help: 

Breakout room toolbar showing chat, record, ask for help, reactions, and leave breakout room.

Closure 

After group work in breakout rooms, reconvene the class in the main room to bring closure to the lesson. Depending on the lesson and your goals, this time might be spent sharing and discussing the deliverables they created, assessing learning, or gathering information about your students’ experience that you can use to plan the next lesson. Perhaps more important, when you elicit feedback and use it, students feel that you care about them and their learning, and this is at the heart of humanizing the online classroom and equity-minded teaching. 

Here are some ideas and tools for closing the lesson: 

Socrative interface showing buttons for quiz, space race, exit ticket, multiple choice, true/false, short answer.

Cautionary Notes

Conclusion 

Synchronous online instruction allows valuable class time with our students, and we owe it to them to use this time in the best service of their learning. Zoom contains simple but powerful tools for humanizing online education, developing students' critical thinking and creativity, and fostering community. Fabiola Torres, Glendale Community College Ethnic Studies Professor, explains that “through care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, humanizing online education becomes a practice of radical love.” 

If you're looking to level up your synchronous online teaching skills, register for the 2-week online course offered by CVC/@ONE, Introduction to Live Online Teaching & Learning!

Guidance for Synchronous Online Classes from College of the Canyons

A laptop showing a grid of people's webcam streams next to a coffee cup.
Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

The great pivot of Spring 2020 provided the opportunity for distance educators to contribute their specialized knowledge and experience throughout their institutions. At the same time, we were also challenged with applying our knowledge and experience to the greatly expanded use of synchronous interaction tools, such as ConferZoom.

During Summer 2020, at College of the Canyons, questions from faculty prompted discussions about consistent institutional approaches to synchronous tools. Fortunately, we were informed and inspired by the article Guidance for Recording Class Sessions with TechConnect (Confer) Zoom by Michelle Pacansky-Brock and CVC-OEI.

Using Michelle’s openly licensed article as a starting point, we convened a task force to develop a set of responses to key questions around recording live sessions, the use of cameras, and student privacy. Our task force consisted of leadership from our Academic Senate, Faculty Association, Enrollment Services, Instruction Office, and Online Education.

Since I first shared this document with colleagues, I have learned that different colleges interpret FERPA in different ways (hello Jim!). While I am happy to share our document with you here, I encourage you to consult with your local stakeholders while adapting it to your local setting. The same document is provided below in both Microsoft Word and PDF format for your convenience.