Online classrooms are a great way for students to learn without being physically present for the class. But this also means it’s easier for them to get distracted doing other things.
To keep your students engaged during a Zoom class, it’s essential to create an interactive and effective learning environment. With that said, here are some practical tips to achieve that.
1. Set Clear Objectives
The first step to keeping your audience engaged is setting clear objectives for your class. This involves sharing the goal of the class or syllabus. You’ll need to clearly outline what the class will cover and what you expect your audience to have learned.
This way, you won’t get sidetracked or spend too much time on a subtopic or topic. Remember to include a Q&A session after you cover a topic to ensure you carry everyone along and no one feels lost in the class.
2. Use Visual Aids
Visual aids are materials like pictures, charts, and diagrams that help your students understand and remember information shared during the class. Visual elements are effective ways to break down complex issues.
Whether you share your screen oruse a virtual whiteboard, visual aids make your class more engaging as your audience can focus on something other than your voice. It’s also a good idea to occasionally break the wall of text with an image or another kind of visual aid to make the class more interesting.
3. Encourage Active Participation
Taking the time to get to know your students individually, even in a virtual setting, can make a significant difference. You can get all attendees to introduce themselves and say something about them at the start of your class. This often gives more personality to your class since it starts to feel more like a school classroom.
If you know everyone, you can check in with them at the beginning of every class to see how they’re doing. For instance, if it’s the week’s first class, you can ask a random attendee what they were up to last weekend.
You should also encourage using the chat box for questions and thoughts to allow your audience to contribute to the discussion. You canuse reactions in Zoom to quickly give feedbackto your students.
Finally, try to call students by name whenever you can and ask them questions to ensure they’re keeping up with the class.
4. Break the Monotony With Breakout Rooms
It’s easy for anyone to feel lost in large Zoom classes, and that’s when many students start to zone out. The good news is Zoom has the perfect fix for this with Breakout Rooms.
Breakout Rooms is a Zoom feature that lets you break up a large group meetinginto several smaller sessions. You can break your class into smaller groups and assign a project to each group to keep them engaged.
To start a breakout room, clickBreakout Roomsin the Zoom toolbar. A new window will pop up where you can select how many rooms you want to create and how many students you want in each room. Then clickCreate Roomsto assign students to each room randomly.
When all the students are in their respective rooms, you can choose to enter different rooms or start a timer and let them work independently, depending on the exercise you have them working on. To start a timer, click theSettingsicon on the Breakout Rooms window, set how long you want the rooms to last, and click theAuto close break rooms after XX minutescheckbox. When the timer runs out, Zoom will automatically close the breakout rooms.
Alternatively, when the students finish in their breakout rooms, you’re able to clickClose All Roomsto gather everyone back into the central Zoom meeting.
5. Use Storytelling Techniques
Storytelling is a handy tool to enhance whatever topic you’re teaching by adding depth and relatability to it. With storytelling, you’ll attract and possibly maintain your students' interest for longer. For instance, you can give a short anecdote or illustration to give more context to certain concepts, especially those that are tricky or difficult to understand.
6. Provide Opportunities for Questions and Feedback
As mentioned earlier, Zoom’s chat box is great for getting feedback when you ask questions during the class. It’s also an alternative for attendees with poor network connections or in a noisy place to answer without disrupting the class flow.
When using the chat box, give your students enough time to think and type, just as you would wait in real life to allow your students to process and answer your questions. You could also read questions or responses aloud from the chat to benefit students who can only join the meeting via audio due to learning needs.
For large classes, consider nonverbal feedback. Zoom’s reactions provide opportunities for quick feedback from your students. It includes several icons students display next to their names, such as thumbs up/down, yes/no, go slower/faster, or need a break. It can also serve as a quick means to collect answers to a yes/no question.
You can also use it when checking in with students (thumbs up/down when asked how their day is going) or to generate responses to clarify any potential confusion.
7. Dissect Content Into Digestible Chunks
If you have a particularly long topic, consider breaking your content into smaller chunks to keep it engaging. You could also use multimedia like images, audio, and video to break long blocks of text to keep students engaged and avoid a monotonous lecture. Essentially, divide content into several subheadings and be sure to give examples for each one.
8. Remind Learners To Switch On Their Webcam During Class
You should encourage students to turn on their videos during class, as it helps create a more personal and interactive learning experience. Students are more likely to engage in class discussions and work alongside their classmates when they can see each other.
Remember to add a reminder in your invite message so attendees dress appropriately for class to avoid feeling embarrassed and reluctant to switch on their webcams because of their appearance.
Always Prepare For Your Zoom Classes
Before beginning your online lesson as a teacher, it’s important to ensure that your course content is engaging. Curate your syllabus in advance and verify that your lectures are relatable and interesting to your students. This will help to capture their attention and keep them engaged throughout the course.
Do some research online for exciting topics that are easy to follow for your students. If your class is boring, students will be more likely to tune out of the meeting.
