Since March, we were all thrown into the zoom world, or google meets depending on your district. I have sat through countless zoom meetings and webinars as a participant as well as presented several all day sessions and smaller professional development hours as well. I have learned a lot about sitting and getting versus building a sense of community through a virtual setting.
The first experiences I had with zoom was a virtual pd on interactive online games for teacher in the district. I had a cohost for this meeting who helped to navigate to sites, manage the chat, and share screens equally. After this professional development session I did not put too much thought into the level of engagement and participant interaction since I was not sure of the next time I would need to use zoom. But that all changes rather quickly after spring break in March. It began with sitting through meetings where a lot of what was discussed was logistical and the engagement built in was sharing your thoughts about something. I then held a session the following week to help teachers with navigating through Khan Academy, a site I used often pre-covid, and how to use this platform with students. This session had close to 60 in attendance, but thankfully a coworker volunteered to cohost and assist with the chat and managing the meeting.
Since these beginning experiences I have held all day zoom meetings with colleagues, presented solo for a few hours, and built up interaction virtually. I have utilized the zoom polls and breakout rooms as well as links to other sites for collaboration. Here are the four main things I have learned to build engagement and a sense of community through zoom.
First, Break out rooms really do make a difference in the session and learning. I know there are some worried when it comes to using break out rooms with students. I have had teachers ask me how to trust students enough to use break out rooms because of the fear of what will happen if they are not in there. My response was that you do not hear everything in a face to face classroom and that time to discuss and collaborate as a group is essential to learning virtually. The discussions and connections students have together during a break out room is far more valuable than the fear of something happening out of a teachers control. A few ways to help participants/students stay focused in a break out room is to give them a topic to share on and prepare them to share out to the whole group after. You can have them share their responses to a question, share how they would solve a problem, or discuss and reflect on their recent learnings. You can also give them a task to complete together. If you create a document that can be collaborated on together such as a google doc or jamboard, having participants in break out rooms builds on the collaboration. They can discuss and share their screen as they are working together to accomplish the task. If possible, it is easiest to manage if you set up your break out rooms in advance of the meeting or at the beginning of the meeting.
Secondly, The poll feature really is a neat tool to use! In order you use polls you must have a licensed account. You can set up polls prior to a zoom meeting through the zoom website. You can also choose to make the polls anonymous or keep the identity of the respondent. At first I thought of polls as more managerial, for example asking if anyone needed a break. I was in a training with Joellen Killion and she utilized the poll to engage participants in the success criteria and a lightbulb went off. I realized the poll has so many possibilities. You can use the poll for a social emotional learning check in with students. You can poll the group at the beginning and end with the same question and compare the results and growth. The best part is that you can download the results after the meeting. If you did not set the poll to anonymous you can see exactly who responded with their response, but during the meeting no one can see that information. This is helpful to follow up with students or participants based on their response.
Third, have a cohost when possible. This may not always be a possibility for you but consider asking a participant you know that can assist you. A cohost is helpful to manage the chat, share screens with, share links to participants or students, and give feedback to you about the presentation. Recently ran my first professional development through zoom without a cohost and I found it difficult to focus on the participants discussions when I was trying to watch the chat, exit out my presentation to share a link with them, or set up break out rooms. A cohost can even assist my sharing their screen for a few moments while you set up your next part in the background so participants can not see.
Lastly, take frequent breaks! At first I followed a typical break schedule and gave a morning and afternoon break as well as lunch for a full day PD. I quickly learned as a participant I needed more breaks than this. I have found a few minutes of a break every hour keeps participants the most engaged. Our brains need a break from a virtual meeting more often than an in person meeting. Even including brain breaks with another activity does not fully relax the brain like a real 5-10 min break does. If you can build in time to encourage participants stand and walk around or step outside to breathe some fresh air, when they return the engagement tends to stay high until the next break.
I am no expert at all things zoom and am still learning about new ways to engage and connect with participants and students through a virtual setting. I hope some of my learnings can help foster a new idea for you when teaching or running a session through a zoom or other video conferencing setting.
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