In teaching conducted via Zoom, students and other attendees interact simultaneously, regardless of location. The Zoom connection is bidirectional, which means that its use is not limited to transmitting lectures over a remote connection. Zoom allows the active involvement of students attending over remote connections, for example, through questions and comments, or participation in assignments during teaching.
Zoom can be an effective tool in a range of teaching situations, such as:
Lecture-based teaching. You can convey teaching provided in on-site teaching facilities to students attending over remote connections and enable interactive participation in the teaching situation through questions and discussion, regardless of the physical location of the students.
Interaction and activation. To activate students gently, you can take advantage of Zoom’s chat feature or, for example, conduct quick polls using the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ options in the reactions menu. This way, you can make your teaching increasingly inclusive, allowing remote participants to make their voices heard.
In groupwork, you can make use of Zoom’s breakout rooms with remote participants. Usually, students present in person and remote participants should be divided into their own small groups, respectively. Outside lectures, small groups set up in advance can also meet over remote connections on Zoom to, for example, work together on assignments.
Guidance and supervision. Various appointments and consultations can also be carried out on Zoom.
Visits. Zoom also makes it easy to invite guest lecturers and experts to lectures without requiring their presence on site. Zoom can also be used for virtual visits, for example, to destinations that would be difficult for large groups to visit because of temporal or physical constraints.
Recordings. Zoom also enables video recording. For example, you can record lectures implemented as hybrid teaching. Students can review such material afterwards, or use it to catch up if they have been unable to attend lectures. Pre-recorded content can also be utilised in flipped classrooms, where students familiarise themselves with the material in advance for discussion at the next session.
Effortless use of Zoom in teaching requires careful planning and familiarisation with its features. Carefully consider which Zoom features to use in teaching, how to manage them and how their use supports teaching. However, you should not use Zoom’s features just because they exist, or your teaching easily becomes technical gimmickry.
You should review in advance the various stages of teaching in practice on Zoom. You can do this on your own using two or more devices. On the first device, host the meeting by logging in to Zoom with your own credentials. On another device, join the meeting through a link or with the meeting ID and password. This way, you can also see how the various stages of implementation appear to participants.
Just as with other online technology, it is important to consider students’ varying technical abilities and the availability of equipment. Not all students are necessarily sufficiently adept at using Zoom. Explain to them the features you intend to use and, if necessary, help them get started with Zoom. Clear instructions ensure that everyone is able to follow and attend your teaching.
If you are using the University’s on-site teaching facilities and the technical equipment available there, you should familiarise yourself with them in advance. This way, you will know what can be done in the facilities and will be able to ensure the functionality of the equipment. With good preparation, you will be able to focus more on the material to be taught in the teaching situation itself.
Zoom enables the diverse use of a range of teaching materials. In addition to regular presentation slides, you can share videos or, for example, display websites related to the topic under discussion.
In hybrid teaching, it is important to ensure that the material used is similarly displayed both in the classroom and to remote participants. The easiest way to do this is to use Zoom’s screen sharing feature to display the content discussed also in the teaching room. This way, the same content is definitely available both in the teaching room and remotely. At the same time, you can see whether remote participants are raising their hands or, for example, asking questions in the Zoom chat. Of course, you should consider which content to display at various stages of teaching. For example, chat messages appearing on the screen certainly do not help participants concentrate during lectures. In fact, time should often be reserved for questions and comments.
If you wish, you can record lectures on Zoom for later use. Recordings can be shared with students through the Unitube Uploader, for example, as videos restricted to specific Moodle areas. This way, only students taking the course can view the recordings through the Moodle area. The use of lecture recordings makes it possible for students to review learning content according to their own schedules, such as when studying for examinations.
Zoom makes it easy to give lectures and presentations where teachers lecture and students listen. However, you should consider how to add elements that activate students and engage them with teaching. They can be used to set the pace for teaching, thus supporting students’ concentration. When planning longer remote lectures, setting the pace is not necessarily enough. Instead, you should consider pauses in teaching at appropriate intervals. You must reserve sufficient time for breaks so that the participants have time to leave the screen to stretch and, for example, fetch a cup of coffee.
The section below explores various ways to activate students and support interaction.
When planning teaching, you should consider which activating elements could be added to your teaching and how you can support interaction during teaching. Zoom and certain separate platforms offer a range of options. When choosing the methods, it also makes a difference whether you are giving the course online or in hybrid form.
At the beginning of lectures, teachers should provide students with instructions on practicalities such as questions and comments. For example, is there time reserved for joint discussion after the lecture, or does the teacher wish to have comments collected on a shared platform? This makes the teaching situation flow smoother.
In hybrid teaching, it is quite difficult for teachers to consider both on-site and remote students equally. You can make it easier by designing clear sections for questions, comments and discussion, enabling you to focus solely on these aspects. If you have another teacher on the course or, for example, a student assistant, you can assign them the task of following and compiling comments and questions from remote participants also during lecture sessions.
In hybrid teaching, it is important to pay particular attention to online platforms used in student interaction and activation. The same ones should be used for the entire group. Zoom’s own tools can be challenging for those attending in person, as having the same Zoom session open on several devices often generates audio feedback. An easy solution is to use a light platform (e.g. Presemo) that is independent of Zoom, shared by on-site and remote participants. Ways such a platform can be used include completing joint assignments or polls, or, most simply, collecting questions about the topic from among the attendees. This way, both on-site and remote participants can work on a shared platform and establish a comprehensive sense of community, even though they may be physically dispersed.
In addition, simple polling is also possible by having the students in the classroom raise their hands, while on Zoom, having students use the ‘Yes’ and ‘No‘ reactions. On-site participants should be notified in advance if online platforms will be used during the lecture so that they can bring with them devices enabling participation in these activities.
In remote teaching, you can use Zoom’s features more freely. Polls can be conducted, for example, with the help of the polling feature.
Remote participants can take part in the discussion either via chat or, whenever possible, via microphone and camera. For remote participants, you should use the ‘Raise hand’ reaction on Zoom for giving people the floor. This way, you avoid talking over each other, giving each individual the chance to speak in turn. In some facilities, the camera can be directed at the audience during discussion, making it possible for remote participants to also see those attending on site. Of course, camera use must be agreed on together with everyone taking the course.
Teaching can also be interspersed with various small-group assignments. On Zoom, the breakout rooms feature is handy for such work. It enables teachers (hosts) to divide the participants into groups, each with its own a virtual room. Typically, the feature is used in conjunction with light group assignments and brainstorming, among other things. You should arrange a shared platform (e.g. a shared PowerPoint presentation), providing instructions in advance, where groups can, for example, sum up their thoughts on the topic under discussion. A shared platform also facilitates joint discussion following the groupwork. The results can be collected, for example, in course Moodle areas for use at later sessions. While breakout rooms are best suited to remote teaching, they can also be used in hybrid teaching. In the classroom, small groups can occupy separate desks, while remote participants can meet in Zoom breakout rooms.
Teachers (hosts) can visit breakout rooms whenever they wish, or students can invite them when they need help. If the session includes teaching assistants (co-hosts), they too can visit breakout rooms, as long as the host has initially linked them to one. Teachers can create one breakout room for assistant teachers, from which they can visit the student breakout rooms according to an agreed schedule. In the meantime, teachers can focus on tasks such as room management and potential problems in the main session.
The screen sharing feature in breakout rooms, available via the ‘Share’ button, makes it possible for students to display, for example, the material under discussion or a shared working area for the group to see. In small-group activities, it is often advisable to instruct each group to select a secretary from among its members to record their thoughts on the agreed platform. If the small-group efforts are to be jointly discussed, a presenter should also be appointed from among each group to summarise the group's thoughts.
Usually, breakout rooms are opened and groups divided on Zoom during sessions, either manually or automatically. The person who set up the meeting can also create breakout rooms in advance in the meeting settings at zoom.helsinki.fi and, if they so wish, divide the participants into the rooms from the start. However, you should keep in mind that advance group division only works if the participants:
A lighter option is to create and name the breakout rooms in advance without determining the participants. The participants will then be added to the rooms manually or automatically during the session, or they can be asked to enter the room assigned to them. The latter is possible then you have checked the option ‘Allow participants to choose room’ in the breakout room settings. This is particularly useful when students are supposed to visit several rooms in implementations resembling, for example, learning cafés or poster walks.
You can read more about using breakout rooms in the Helpdesk guidelines and in the Zoom instructions on the topic.
In addition to actual teaching, Zoom can be used for remote guidance and supervision or feedback provision. Meetings can be attended by individual students or groups alike. If there are several students, for example, in several small groups, they can be divided into breakout rooms which the teacher can visit by turns to hear about support needs and help the students advance in their efforts.
Guidance and supervision sessions can include the joint examination of various materials. Students can present their work using Zoom’s screen share feature, or, if they have submitted their work in advance to the teacher, the teacher can open the materials and display selected content alongside their comments. With the help of Zoom’s annotation tools, teachers can indicate and highlight relevant sections in documents. Students too can use these tools. At times, it may be better to use, for example, the comment feature in the word processing software itself to ensure that entries are preserved.