Overview of Class Engagement

PLAN for engagement and community – it doesn't happen as naturally on Zoom as it does in person.

• Prime students before class so that they are prepared to engage. You can use a Canvas discussion board, assign a related reading or a video, have students read a paper, provide a prompt, etc. 
• Use breakout rooms to build community and give students the opportunity to engage with the material in small groups of their peers to prepare for a discussion with the entire class.
• Use shared documents to give students a shared workspace that you can monitor in real-time (like walking around your classroom) without needing to enter breakout rooms. This also allows students to collaboratively prepare review materials and content for your course.
• Provide structure by giving specific instructions, time-frame, expected output/product, assigning roles, letting students know when an instructor will enter the breakout rooms, etc.
• Be flexible in how students can participate to give students the opportunity to respond using their preferred method and to hear from more students and manage discussions, especially in larger classes or with quieter groups.
  • Use the chat feature for questions and discussion
  • Use polling for knowledge check-ins or exit tickets
  • Utilize Zoom reactions/responses for quick feedback
  • Use annotation for interactive drawing/crowdsourcing

For most of these activities, you can use shared documents to help monitor the activity of each group and provide a space for students to collect their thoughts.

Small group discussions

• Discuss poll questions in small groups. Poll the class and show the results, then have students go into breakout rooms to discuss their answers. You can re-poll students afterwards and/or continue the discussion as a class.
• Brainstorm. Give students a prompt and send them into breakout rooms to discuss.
• Evaluating media. Students can discuss a video, podcast, reading, etc.
• Case study. Provide students a case study (or multiple) and have them discuss in small groups in breakout rooms. 
• Analyze a figure. Assign each group a figure and have students discuss in small groups. In the main session, one student from each group can comment on their figure and how their group analyzed and interpreted the data.
• Jigsaw activities. Links to an external site. You can assign each group a complementary topic or task. One each group finishes, you can mix the students so that there's a representative "expert" from each original group to review what their group discussed. 
  • For example, if you were covering visual perception, you could assign students to 1) anatomy of the eye, 2) the types of cells responsible for detecting light, or 3) the brain regions and connections responsible for generating our perception of visual stimuli. Each group would review their assigned topic before being mixed into new groups consisting of students from each of the three groups to synthesize this information. 

Guided activities and games

• Review and discuss a practice exam. Before class, assign groups to specific questions on a practice exam. After giving each group time to go over their questions, you can review the exam together as a class. Using shared documents allows students to collaboratively edit and correct their responses based on the class discussion.
• Finding sources for a project. Students can work together to start a literature review and/or compile a list of references.  
• Completing a worksheet. Shared documents are a great way for students to work together to complete a worksheet.
• Trivia games. Use PollEverywhere or another service to quiz students in a fun, competitive setting.

#1: Supports knowledge construction.

• Helps reinforce main points by “chunking” content
• Helps students build and solidify a working framework of knowledge
• Reduces information overload

#2: Shows compassion for your students.

#3: Active learning is more effective.

• In 2014, the National Academy of Sciences analyzed results from 225 studies of STEM classes in which students were randomly assigned to lectures or active learning (from the same instructor)
• With active learning, failure rate dropped by 12% (from a 34% to a 22% failure rate)
• “Some studies (e.g. Van Heuvelen in Am. J. Physics; Deslauriers et al. in Science) had purposely matched award-winning lecturers with inexperienced teachers who do active learning and found that the students did worse when given "brilliant lectures."
• We've yet to see any evidence that celebrated lecturers can help students more than even 1st-generation active learning does.”

Source: Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Scott Freeman, Sarah L. Eddy, Miles McDonough, Michelle K. Smith, Nnadozie Okoroafor, Hannah Jordt, and Mary Pat Wenderoth. PNAS. June 10, 2014 111 (23) 8410-8415; first published May 12, 2014; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111 PMC4060654 Links to an external site.

Performance vs. perception: Lecturing feels more effective, even though it’s not!

Source: Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Louis Deslauriers, Logan S. McCarty, Kelly Miller, Kristina Callaghan, and Greg Kestin. PNAS. September 24, 2019. 116 (39) 19251-19257; first published September 4, 2019; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821936116 Links to an external site. 

You can review your Zoom settings to make sure that the features you wish to use are enabled and that you have given participants permission to use them (e.g. for Annotation, Meeting Reactions, Chat, and Whiteboard).

You can change your default settings via the Emory Zoom web portal Links to an external site., but you can also change your settings at any time during a meeting that you host by clicking the Security button. You can do this strategically - for example, you can enable Chat or Annotation only during designated periods of your class to avoid distractions.