Video conference with breakout rooms

With Zoom.us you can have video meetings with a large number of students without being physically present with them. When the video conference is in progress, you have a host of features available to support your teaching.

You can share your screen so your students can follow along when you show a presentation or reviews a program. You have complete control over what you want to share and can only show individual programs, for example. PowerPoint over your entire screen. Zoom.us also has a built-in digital whiteboard that you can use during the actual meeting and download as an image file for subsequent use.

If you have many students, you can turn off their sound to avoid noise. You can re-open the sound for each student or even allow them to share their screen. To ensure that students can still ask questions during the video meeting, open a chat that can run concurrently. Here the students can ask questions to you or each other.

Breakout room

To enable more interaction between students, zoom.us has a feature called breakout rooms. It is - as the name suggests - subspace for your video meeting. It allows you to divide the students into smaller groups with their own video room. Breakout rooms are easy to handle, as grouping can be done automatically and you can set the rooms to close again after a certain number of minutes. As a teacher, you can jump in and out of each breakout room and join the groups.

Recorded sessions

The entire session allows you to record and save as a video file on your computer and subsequently share it with your students. Here, you should start by notifying students that you are recording, as they will also be included in the recording.

You can access Zoom from your Blackboard course page (see tutorial)

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Instructor guidelines - facilitating and presenting in an online meeting

Technical part

• Host the online meeting on a device that has a wired connection to the internet to secure a smooth experience for participants and yourself.
• Use a headset with a microphone stick for a better voice and sound experience.
• Make sure to enable your camera feed and microphone when hosting the meeting. Align your camera horisontal with your eyes and make sure you are not sitting in backlight.
• Join the meeting room well ahead of time to test your connection, camera feed and microphone.
• Mute all participants upon entry if it is not enabled by default.

Social part

• While participants are joining the meeting, you might ask a discrete question in the chat such as ‘How is the weather in your location?’. This action should help students become familiar with the chat tool that is available in the recommended video conferencing tool Zoom.
• Beginning the meeting, you might want to introduce students to your code-of-conduct.
• You can, for example, let students know that they are muted on purpose and you prefer questions in the chat. You might also want to state when you will be looking in the chat.
• If you have a small group of students (15 persons or less), you might want to have them interact using the microphone and video feed.
• Lead the meeting and communicate what you are about to do and how you expect students to interact.
• If you are about to make a presentation, let students know for how long you expect to talk and how students can interact with you during the presentation.
• You might want students to think about a question and write their answer in the chat to give yourself a break. Communicate clearly what students should do.
• In the recommended video conferencing tool Zoom, you might also use another feature such as breakout-rooms in which students are sent out into group rooms. Explain to students what happens when they are sent away in groups and how students should respond.

‍Student guidelines - participating in an online meeting

You can copy the text below and add as a description on your Blackboard page

• Join the online meeting on a device that has a wired connection to the internet to avoid delays. Wi-Fi still does a decent job so no worries if you access the meeting through a non-wired device like a mobile phone.
• Use earplugs or a headset for a better sound experience.
• Mute yourself and hide your camera feed upon entry if it is not default in the meeting room. If the instructor advises you to do otherwise in order to participate in a discussion, follow the guidelines from the instructor.
• Join the meeting well ahead of time to test your connection and sound

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