Zoom Engagement Tools and Teaching Tips

It’s hard teaching over Zoom— let’s start by acknowledging that inevitable truth. But it’s definitely possible to design and facilitate engaging virtual classes. I’ve experienced it personally, finding myself transformed in Zoom workshops despite the tangle of wires that both separate and connect us. Those experiences have helped me realize that Zoom teaching, despite its challenges, offers new ways of engaging meaningfully with material and connecting with each other.  

Despite the changes that virtual teaching hath wrought, the fundamental things apply, as Sam sings in Casablanca. Successful Zoom teaching, like in–person teaching, comes alive through the relationships that you build with your students and the engaging learning activities that you design and facilitate. 

Many useful things that you would normally do with your students in person are entirely possible to facilitate over Zoom. You can easily share your learning objectives and a personal story of what success looks like in your class. You could ask your students to think about a concept and free write about it on their own before sharing their ideas verbally and/or in writing. You can even invite them to take a few centering breaths or a well–timed stretch break. Finding ways to be human together helps shorten the distance between the screens and shows that you care. That will always make an impact, whether on Zoom or in the classroom. 

To augment your empathetic leadership, Zoom also offers a unique suite of tools that allow you to do some things that you couldn’t do as easily in person. Below, I’m going to review the pedagogical capabilities built into your Zoom meeting host menu bar and suggest some creative uses for each of the tools. Variety is the spice of teaching, so let this blog post inspire you to try out new engagement strategies in your classes! 

1- Audio: Mute/Unmute

Let’s be honest- in Zoomland, the vastly alluring Internet is only a click away, so what strategies are you using to keep your students with you? Think of your lesson plan as a student experience plan. What are students doing at each moment of your class together? If the answer is mostly listening to talking heads, I guarantee they will click away. So what are your students actively doing to make meaningful discoveries that align with what you want them to learn?

First of all, imagine you’re hosting your own interactive TV show. Start by having fun in front of the camera, whatever that authentically looks like for you. Try backing up away from your camera to demonstrate something with your whole body, then come in for a close-up, speaking in a whisper to convey a key point as if it were the most important secret in the world. Stage a memorable prop just off camera that you pick up and interact with at a key moment, like a colorful model of the caffeine molecule in a chemistry course. Varying up your energy and delivery, and introducing the element of surprise, helps promote engagement. Unsurprisingly, when you make your class memorable, students will not only be less likely to click away, but be more likely to remember whatever they’re learning!

Try opening up your zoom classroom early and have intro music playing by sharing your computer audio. Choose music that’s related to your topic, and ask students to make a connection between the song and last night’s reading, or give a playful pop quiz about what the last few songs were. Set an expectation at the beginning of the semester that they arrive a couple of minutes early to hear the song and that class will begin exactly at one minute after the hour with something that you ask them to do. Invite students to suggest discipline-related intro music to get the benefit of their creativity or even outro music that ends the class every week, perhaps on a rotating schedule, tied to some achievement, or even via a Brightspace discussion board, depending on what will create the most positive energy and engagement. Setting clear expectations and introducing shared rituals like intro or outro music helps build a collective consciousness that promotes community and learning.

Playing with the tool of mute/unmute, try a cacophonous experiment of having everyone unmute and read defined snippets of a text, popcorn style, such as a poem by line, stanza, or punctuation mark, constraints that encourage close reading. I’ve observed that the dramatic tension generated by such a bold activity brings participants to the edge of their seats. And the choral sound of multiple participants reading the same line simultaneously, with that unmistakable zoom lag echo, is surprisingly beautiful.  

2- Video

2A) Virtual Backgrounds and Filters  

Playfulness is one of the most innate and genuine engagement tools that we have as human beings. Zoom backgrounds and filters, used intentionally, allow for playful self-expression and can generate surprise connections. 

Here are examples of ways to use these tools to promote student engagement:

• You could advise your students of the topical theme of each given class meeting and have them choose a virtual background to match it, like modernist architecture or microscopic images of mitochondria.  
• You could ask your students to choose a Zoom filter for the first 2 minutes of class as a fun way to check in and see how people are doing, inviting them to share their personalities and building classroom community. 
• You could create a friendly competition wherein whomever gets the right answer to a given problem has the honor of donning the virtual graduation cap or the filter of their choice.  
• You could create a PowerPoint as your virtual background and flip through a series of slides related to the class itself, from images of archaeological sites to construction sites.
• You could have topical text as your background, like an evocative quote, or a map that you interact with like a meteorologist would on the evening news.  

You might even establish a playful convention whereby students respond to a yes or no question by turning their videos on or off. This can be fun for sharing pro/con opinions or getting to know each other at the beginning of the semester. (i.e. Everyone for whom XYZ is true, turn your video on…) 

2B) Getting Cameras On 

I know all too well how frustrating it can be to stand in front of a Zoom gallery full of faceless names. Every professor has their own way of dealing with this challenge, from strongly encouraging video use from day one to creatively making the most of an audio-only environment. If encouragement is your strategy, definitely explain why it’s important to you personally and how it will help the collective learning experience, and do so early and often. A classroom culture is created from the get-go, and once it’s established, it can be hard to change.

One great suggestion I heard in this vein comes from a professor who encourages students to put their cameras on, but leaves space open for students to have their cameras off when they feel the need to do so. 

However, he makes it clear on the first day of classes that students with cameras off will be cold called. He doesn’t frame it putatively, but instead emphasizes how much he values each and every students voice, and uses cold calling to make sure that everyone in the class has the opportunity to share their perspective. And it turns out that a whole lot more cameras snapped on after he made that expectation clear and followed through on it.  

3- Security: Renaming

You can enable participants to rename themselves, which is another way to engage them playfully in the class. They could rename themselves something having to do with the topic at hand, like their favorite author from the romantic period.

You could ask them all to simultaneously rename themselves an answer to a question that you ask, which is certainly a fun way to get everyone looking at their screens. But when you’re done, remember to ask everyone to rename themselves their real name so you know who they are!   

4- Participants

This is where you and your participants can go to rename yourselves in a Zoom meeting. You can also go here to make others the co-host of the meeting and give participants the ability to share their screens. Additionally, you can mute everyone or invite everyone to unmute from this menu showing the list of all in attendance. 

The attendance list is a great way to implement the cold calling suggestion, as you can see, given the video/audio icons next to everyone’s name, who has their camera on and who doesn’t.

5- Polls 

You can create polls live in the moment or compose them in advance so all you have to do is “start polling” in the class meeting. Just remember to share the results so that your class can see them!

To that point, never be afraid to ask students if they can see something and are on the same page as you are, from the poll results and shared screen to the what they are expected to do when you send them to breakout rooms. All too often, participants won’t speak up over Zoom even when something isn’t clear. So create a culture in which they feel free to speak up by regularly asking them to do so. Intentionally inviting a open line of communication between you and your students is especially vital in virtual teaching. 

You can use polls playfully by creating a series of whimsical choices that students respond to. For example, you could ask students to describe their relationship to poetry with the following options: 

• I dressed up as Emily Dickinson on Halloween
• Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one more traveled by 
• I’m allergic to metaphors 

In this example employing artistic abstraction, students are engaged as active makers of meaning using key tools of the discipline itself (metaphor and imagery), and are empowered to share their love for or ambivalence about the subject in a safe and witty way. Students really appreciate the opportunity to feel heard and to smile, and this small interactive moment in a zoom class gives them the opportunity to do both.  

You can also use polls to facilitate discussion around weighty topics, like ethical dilemmas in business or science. You could also use them to gauge the collective opinion on the answer to a problem set and adjust your teaching accordingly. The possibilities are as limitless as your imagination.  

6- Chat

Zoom chat is a powerful tool to provide multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement, which are the core principles of Universal Design for Learning. (Check out this fantastic resource to learn more about Universal Design for Learning, and how to apply its principles when teaching in Brightspace.)

Here are some possibilities for using chat creatively: 

• Invite students to private message you if they have for question and don’t feel comfortable raising it in front of the whole class. 
• Invite students to post their questions/comments in the chat (directed at either you or to their classmates) at any time so that they don’t forget them. Then you can tie their ideas in whenever works within the flow of the class.  
• Invite students to post their opinions, reflections, or excerpts from their writing in the chat in addition to having an oral discussion. Many learners who might stay silent in a large group discussion will thrive given the opportunity to express themselves in writing.   

Try a Zoom waterfall, in which you pose a question to the class and give students a couple of minutes to compose a written response. The waterfall effect happens when you conduct a dramatic countdown and everyone posts their response in the chat at once. This gives students a chance to reflect thoughtfully on their own, asks them all to share their thoughts without parroting what others say, and creates a fun moment of engagement as all the responses fly in. 

If you do this activity, make sure to give students time to read each other’s responses, and ask them to do something specific to make meaning out of the responses that they have read. For example, to promote critical thinking, you could ask them to identify a classmate’s argument that resonates for them and share why. Or to promote powerful written expression, they could choose a phrase from one of their classmates’ writing which strikes them as particularly strong prose and copy/paste it back into the chat to lift up each other’s work.  

7- Screen Sharing Options

7A) Screen Share

Give your students the opportunity to share their screens. Maybe you’ve asked them to find a striking topical image or a music/audio clip related to the material, to prepare a presentation, to prototype a product, to make a mock–up drawing, etc. It’s always engaging to hear multiple voices and literally see how other people think through the wizardry of screen sharing.

7B) Whiteboard   

When you share your screen, in addition to anything that’s on your computer, you can also share the Zoom whiteboard, which provides a blank canvas for you and your students to create whatever you want. FYI, if you’re writing, it’s best to use a tablet and stylus. DTS has Wacom tablets available to faculty if you don’t already have one– contact techspot@wit.edu.

The digital whiteboard is a great place to do a collaborative ideation or reflection activity that gives the students multiple means of representing their ideas, from words and images to symbols and lines of connection.  

7C) Annotate  

The possibilities are truly endless with the annotate feature. When you or your students are screen sharing, all participants have the option of annotating the shared screen by overlaying words, symbols, lines, arrows, drawings, etc. Here are some creative possibilities for this: 

• You could run group opinion–sharing activities like “four corners” or a “spectrum line up” by asking students to virtually place themselves on a PowerPoint/Google slide using Zoom’s menu of annotation symbols. The four corners of your slide would have text/imagery represent four different perspectives on an issue. Alternately, you could have students place their virtual selves (via an annotation symbol) along a linear spectrum representing a spectrum of feelings about a given topic. The spectrum could be defined concretely, like strongly disagree to strongly agree or 1 to 10, or abstractly/conceptually, like ocean to mountain, in which case students would have to subjectively make meaning and explain their positions to each other. These are great activities for sparking dialogue, as you can ask folks from different areas of the page why they placed themselves there and even give them an opportunity to move if their opinion shifts after hearing their classmates’ perspectives.
• You could create a grid or a table on your slide and ask students to use that grid to express themselves in some way. Perhaps each student gets a box where they write their opinion or reaction. Perhaps each box has a defined option written into it and students are asked to select one or multiple using annotation tools. (i.e. Put a star in the boxes of study strategies you already use, and a heart in the boxes of study strategies you would like to try.)  
• You could share an image or an excerpt of text and have students do a close reading by annotating your shared screen and highlighting elements of the image or text that they identify as particularly significant. You could have them add arrows, comments, and even comment on each others comments. 
• You could share a feelings wheel and have your students annotate it to identify specifically where they stand on a given topic. This could lead to mapping out the group’s collective response via a word map.
• You could have students collaboratively create a concept map by annotating a concept map/conceptual diagram template on your shared screen.
• You could try a graffiti wall, in which students respond to a prompt or reflect on something they’ve read, seen, or heard in an open-ended manner. Students may be slow to jump in at first, but will take ownership over the exercise and surprise you with their creativity when given modeling and encouragement. And the next time you facilitate an exercise like this, students will be familiar with what’s being asked and will dive right in.

Of course, there are plenty of tools external to Zoom that allow a class to collaborate on a shared screen in real time, like Google Docs, Slides, or Jamboard. Those are easy to set up, and you can simply post a link to the shared virtual collaboration space of your choice in the Zoom chat and voilà, you’re off to the races. Just remember to enable everyone with the link to edit!

8- Record

You can record your Zoom meetings, and with a tiny bit of advance setup on your end, they will automatically be uploaded to your Panopto site and crosslinked to your Brightspace page. Once in Panopto, you can add automated captioning to your class meeting recordings so that students can revisit the class at a later date in an even more accessible fashion. For more info on how to do this, check out this step-by-step guide.

Newer versions of Zoom have a CC button next to record so that you can enable live automated transcription of your zoom class session. In addition to being of great benefit for anyone with audio issues, English language learners, visual learners, and more, it’s also engaging to for viewers to laugh at the transcription bot’s occasional mistakes.

9- Breakout Rooms

Breakout rooms can be created in the moment or set up in advance, which is particularly useful if you are doing group work that requires repeatedly breaking into the same groups. This is a great tool for everything from a quick “turn and talk to a partner about a given topic for a couple of minutes” to more lengthy periods of small group discussion. I recommend putting 2, 3, or a maximum of 4 students in breakout rooms to give everyone a chance to participate and connect.

When you send participants into breakout rooms, make sure to give them specific instructions of exactly what you want them to do with each other while there. Don’t leave the prompt too open-ended, or you might encounter silence or a discussion about something unrelated to class.

You can visit the different breakout rooms as you would during an in-person class, which is a great method of keeping students on task, differentiating your instruction to serve the needs of each group, and getting a sense of where to go next to move the class discussion forward.

Include a deliverable that they will have to offer to the group upon returning from breakout rooms. For example: 1 lingering question, your top 2 takeaways, 3 possible interpretations, etc.

If you ask them to return from breakout rooms with answers ready to paste into the chat, everyone in the class will get the benefit of each others’ ideas, making their thinking visible to each other and to you. Of course, you can always save the chat and post it on your Brightspace page if it’s particularly interesting.

Best practice is to post your written instructions in the chat prior to opening the breakout rooms so that all participants have access to the written directions while they are in the breakout rooms. If you don’t do this, I guarantee some groups will not be totally sure what they were supposed to do, and they aren’t likely to ask.

10- Reactions 

Emoji-style reactions are a fun way to take a quick thumbs up/thumbs down poll, allow students to quickly express their opinions, or to celebrate each other’s successes and cheer each other on. Plus they introduce an element of low-stakes playful engagement that adds some needed spice to your virtual class.

Before using these Zoom tools for the first time, do a quick tech rehearsal before your class meeting with a colleague or teaching assistant. That will help you confirm that participants can see what you want them to see, hear what you want them to hear, and add to collaborative spaces that you’ve set up online. Rehearsing will give you a comfortable space to work through the tech challenges that will inevitably arise and head into your class meeting with the confidence that things will go smoothly.

In Conclusion

I hope this blog post inspires you to try new teaching tactics using the tools of Zoom to engage your students in dynamic learning activities. The more moments of active engagement you create, the better, so use these ideas to diversify your teaching strategies! As a side benefit, you’ll build classroom community and empower students to succeed in your course.

In Zoom teaching, the fundamental things that make professors deeply impactful still apply— authentically sharing your passion for your discipline, heartfelt empathy that makes your students feel seen and heard, and an intentionally designed journey of discovery guided by your thoughtful and caring wisdom. There’s no app for that, and there never will be; it’s the unique magic that you bring to your teaching practice.

I know it’s hard to let that shine through the Zoom screen. Give yourself permission to be genuine and vulnerable, connecting with your students on a human level, and ask them to meet you halfway. They will appreciate it, and many of them will make the extra effort that Zoom classes need to come alive. No one said this was going to be easy. But I promise you, with some creative learning design, Zoom teaching can be transformational. 

Josh Luckens is an instructional designer with Learning Innovation & Technology at Wentworth. Josh would be happy to consult with you about creative ways to make your teaching practice more active, dynamic, and engaging. Feel free to contact him at luckensj@wit.edu.