Participation is crucial in any learning environment, and a Zoom session is no different. Participation encourages attention, which is a requisite for learning. If students aren’t attending to the content or discussions on offer, they have no chance of encoding that content and then being able to use it at a later time: in other words, learning it. Being skillful in ensuring participation is therefore imperative.
Varying the way students are asked to participate is a powerful way to encourage engagement. Zoom can encourage participation in several different modes, which sometimes is not possible in a regular face to face session. Here’s how a teacher/tutor can engage students in a Zoom session:
- Immediate quiz/questions
- Explaining your method
- Non-verbal feedback
- Verbal questions
- Written questions
- Polls/quizzes
- Breakout rooms
- Screen sharing
- Using the whiteboard
- Modifying content
1. IMMEDIATE QUIZ/QUESTIONS
Because of the way our memories function, recapping content from previous sessions is essential to help the knowledge move into the long-term memory where it can then be recalled automatically to assist in processing new information. Students who arrive on time to your Zoom session should immediately be put to work, either doing a 3 or 4 question quiz on previous learning, or producing short answers to a question or 2. Both of these are shared from your screen. This then does 2 things: firstly, it activates prior knowledge that will assist in today’s learning, and secondly, it gets the students involved straight away. Late comers also won’t miss the new content. Answers to the quiz etc are briefly discussed and then the current session begins with students’ minds active.
2. EXPLAINING YOUR METHOD
By articulating the strategies you will employ in the session up front you are likely to alleviate students’ anxieties about some of the processes they’ll experience during the session, and therefore encourage participation. Explaining why you are repeating questions, why you are talking about things from previous sessions, why you are asking for different types of responses and feedback, why you are insisting everyone responds before you move on, why you are using polls and why you are so keen on student participation and its effect on learning will help students feel more comfortable during the session and feel more able to participate.
3. NON-VERBAL FEEDBACK
You will have to turn on NON-VERBAL FEEDBACK in the settings:
Getting students to indicate a yes or no or a thumbs up encourages participation. Whilst you can’t guarantee such an assessment for learning truly proves students have understood your question, as students could just be guessing or indicating to avoid being asked why they haven’t, it still gets students involved. Even if a student answers to try to avoid a follow up question when the tutor sees they haven’t responded they are still actively listening, which is a condition of learning. Varying the type of questions can also generate some humour and fun in a session – asking if students are breathing, or if they know that Liverpool football club is the best team in the world for example. Non-verbal feedback is best used in triangulation with other assessment for learning options, such as verbal questions:
4. VERBAL QUESTIONS
Effective questioning is a powerful way to assess for learning and guarantee participation. The key to effective questioning is to ask, wait for students to process the question, and then check a number of answers before saying if the answers are right or wrong. Repeat the questions at least 3 times during the processing stage. Keeping the questions ‘alive’ is important to encourage participation because as soon as you provide an answer the majority of students will stop thinking about the answer – they have no need to keep thinking: allowing time for students to think about the answer gets the retrieval process activated as they search their minds for connections to previously encoded information. By randomly choosing students to answer you not only get a sense of their levels of understanding which allows you to pivot the next sequence if necessary, but it also keeps students on their toes as they realise that they may be called on next. This random selection of students will even work in a very large tutorial.
Sometimes it’s the little things. Be aware that you might naturally tend to favour interacting with those you can see in the session. Those without their cameras on, as in the image below, may not get asked as many questions, so an awareness of this and conscious questioning of unseen students will encourage a broad participation in the session.
5. WRITTEN QUESTIONS
Using the chat section to elicit answers to check for learning encourages participation. It is a variation on simply just listening and answering verbally. Having students write down an answer proves they know or don’t know the content. Dedicating a time in a session for this process not only varies the type of participation, but can be a great indicator that students have the required knowledge to continue. Opening up the chat lines for student to student interactions also encourages participation as some will answer questions and feel empowered in the process, and some will just enjoy the interactions. It is important though that the chat area is monitored as it can lead to the wrong kind of participation – like students just chatting in the classroom/lecture theatre which means they are not paying attention to the content. You can’t write/read and listen at the same time. I write about that here.
6. POLLS/QUIZZES
Using the poll function in Zoom is easy. You have to ensure it is turned on in the settings:
Once you’ve designed your questions, preferably before the session, you can then launch the poll.
Students then participate by responding. You then share the results, which at this point are anonymous, with the whole group. This serves as an assessment for learning opportunity, and you can pivot the session based on the answers if necessary. In answering the questions, students’ minds are activated as they search for knowledge in their schemata. There is an art to designing effective polls and multiple choice questions, and I discuss that art form here.
Canvas quiz can also be incorporated into the Zoom session. The advantage of this is that it has a variety of question types that further encourage participation. There are many other apps too, such as Quizizz, Kahoot, and Mentimeter, but should be used with caution if not supported by your institution, as students may not want to sign-up for such platforms that essentially require them to surrender their data.
7. BREAKOUT ROOMS
Sending students into groups to discuss a concept or problem is a fantastic way to encourage participation. Homogeneous groups tend to work best, because those with vastly different levels of developed schema tend not to engage with each other as well as those with closer skill levels. It is sometimes of benefit of the more knowledgeable student to help another peer, but this then relies on effective teaching skills to work, and in reality that is a big ask of a student. So setting them up before a session may be your best bet.
Providing guidance on what to do when students are in the session is crucial, and it is worth popping in to each group to see how it is progressing. As Tim Klapdor, an online expert at Adelaide University suggests, ‘Encourage discussion by promoting the students’ voice. Use provocation as a tool for discussion. Ask the students to explain and expand on concepts, existing understanding and their opinions on topics. Get students to add to one another’s contributions by threading responses from different students. Promote a sense of community by establishing open lines of communication through positive individual contributions.’ Attributing a member of the group to be a scribe is also worth doing, so that when the group returns to the main session they are able to share their screen and discuss their work/findings/solutions etc.
8. SCREEN SHARING
Getting students to share their screen encourages participation. This is especially effective coming out of a breakout room, but can be used at any point in a session. A student may be asked to demonstrate their workings of a problem, an answer to an essay question etc and the tutor can use it as a model to provide feedback. Of course caution would be used here, and only positive/constructive feedback provided.
9. USING THE WHITEBOARD
Sharing the whiteboard and getting students to interact with the content you or they put on there is a great way to encourage participation. You could model your thinking process in this medium and explain or annotate examples to discuss how students could gain a better understanding of the content. You could also have students annotate the board, asking them to underline key words, complete equations etc. Getting multiple students to add their own annotations is probably more beneficial with smaller groups, such as in the breakout rooms. Unfortunately in Zoom you can’t paste an image on the whiteboard, only text.
10. MODIFYING CONTENT
I firmly believe that there will only be a very small percentage of students who are genuinely unwilling to participate in this medium. Such students would be expected to use the chat option and only ‘send to the host’ for example to ensure they are still participating. If you have tried all of the above strategies and your students are still not really getting involved, it is likely that they just don’t know the answers. As humans, we naturally want to succeed, and non-participation may indicate to you that you need to strip it back a bit, and come back to some foundational knowledge. It doesn’t matter what you think students should know, it is about what they actually do, and the relevant development of their schema. It is better that you facilitate the construction of knowledge, and provide questions that students will know answers to so they can build up their confidence in participating, By doing this, you will slowly, but surely, build their schemata so they will want to get involved consistently.
Online participation is essential for the session to be effective. If you have other tips and advice how to engage participation, please let me know and i’ll add to the list.
I’m Paul Moss. I’m a learning designer. Follow me on @twitter
LEARNING DESIGN by Paul G Moss 
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