Switching your teaching to Zoom on a short notice?

Based on my limited experience of teaching a few courses online last semester on a short notice, using Zoom (video conference software) and Canvas (learning management platform), I wanted to try to break down what it means to teach synchronously through Zoom (surely there are official guides on how to use Zoom, but if you are interested in a personal experience, read on). At the end of the post, I have put together a few useful links to elsewhere online.

Zoom allows you to lecture a little like in a classroom – to me, it doesn’t feel radically different. You can share your screen to show e.g. your PowerPoint and students can see your face in a little image while you go through your slides. You can see students’ faces on a row of little images on your screen, provided that students’ cameras are working or that they are willing to turn them on. If not, you’ll just work with what you have. Speak anyway, even if you can’t see your audience. If you lecture, pause frequently to check for understanding and ask for questions. I used to scroll through the row of little images of students’ faces to see at least some reaction while talking. opening breakout rooms on Zoom

If you have a large meeting (anything more than a few students), I recommend breaking up the class into smaller groups for discussion. Discussion among the entire class on Zoom is possibly even more difficult to get going than in a real classroom, because only one person should speak at a time and the audience should be muted to avoid noise. They have to unmute themselves if they want to speak: an additional barrier.

You can divide the audience into what Zoom calls “breakout rooms” manually or assign students to rooms yourself. When you open the rooms, you as the host stay in the main room, but now is the time to start visiting students’ groups, which is not unlike circulating the classroom while students are discussing in small groups in a physical classroom. You can switch from one room to another and participate or answer their questions.

Note that while students are in breakout rooms, they cannot see your PowerPoint or similar that you may have been sharing. Therefore, if you want them to discuss particular questions or have instructions for what to accomplish, post these on the learning management platform in advance. You can use the chat in Zoom to give them the link. The chat is also helpful for taking questions, if students can’t or don’t want to speak up for any reason.

I also experimented with adding discussion questions on a Google Docs file and instructed students to write down their ideas while they were discussing (choose “anyone with the link can edit” in the “share” settings as you set up the Google Doc). In a class of 27 students, this produced a lot of ideas – possibly even so many that they were a little redundant. Think of making your instructions quite specific.

You can also record the lecture, in case students can’t participate live (in exceptional circumstances, probably a good idea to be flexible and allow students not to attend or to delay watching videos until later if they are not able to access stable internet right now). It can then be shared on the learning management platform.

Outside Zoom, sharing a lot of practical information on the course on the learning management platform is a good idea. I do this in face-to-face teaching too, but in online teaching, it is doubly important. When you are not physically present for your students, you can also use the learning management platform as an opportunity to share support materials – links to online materials, handouts, even carefully selected YouTube videos or the like. You can also use it to communicate frequently with your students – send announcements or discussion forum posts to ensure people know what they are supposed to be doing.

In my case, I jumped into online teaching on a short notice. Obviously this limited experience does not make me an expert in online teaching (which, as many have rightfully pointed out, can require entirely different approaches, methods and skill sets than face-to-face teaching – fair enough!), but at least I have experience of how to jump into such teaching quickly.

I am a contingent instructor and my (part-time, fixed-term) contract and course load was finalized at the last minute. I did my teaching without any special equipment, using my own laptop and its built-in camera and microphone. I had headphones but no headset, obviously the latter would be recommended. I worked from home, teaching students in Sweden from Finland, running meetings from my kitchen table which was the cleanest surface in my apartment with a non-distracting background (a white wall). I’m telling you all this just to say that your set-up doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

The university where I worked at uses Zoom a lot already and offers some courses remotely, so students were mostly prepared, I had something to lean on and received some previous materials. That helps, but I had little time to study any best practices on online teaching. I think I read some tips, but mostly I had to focus my energy on figuring out what my courses were supposed to be about, rather than thinking about the modes of delivery. I did my best, of course, and mine were not exceptional circumstances, like the ones many face now. In such a situation, let go of perfectionism. You may not be able to provide incredibly innovative and engaging video lecturing or completely redesign all your assignments to be seamlessly integrated into the online environment. Just do what you can right now. Finally, I recognize that synchronous online teaching will not work for everyone or in all situations, but if you are faced with it, I want to assure you that it’s easier than it may sound.

Links:

Inside Higher Ed: So You Want to Temporarily Teach Online

Chronicle Vitae: Going Online in a Hurry – What do Do and Where to Start

The Chronicle of Higher Education: How to Be a Better Online Teacher

Baltimore Metro Writing Centers Association: Shifting to Online Writing Instruction and Writing Center Services: A Resource List