Successful online engagement

Successful online engagement requires strategy. Planning for an online meeting is more than planning an agenda and adding a video feed. This guide will use Zoom as the primary platform for virtual meeting, but other platforms will likely have similar functionality.

Have Norms.

Example Norms could be:

• Turn on your camera
• Broadcast from a quiet place
• Do not multi-task
• Mute yourself when you’re not speaking to avoid background noise

Online Meeting Planning > Agenda Planning

You must think strategically about how you will create opportunities for engagement spread throughout instructional time. Once you lose participants’ focus, it is hard to bring it back. Some suggestions for planning your online meeting:

• Have planned breaks if the class is long. People will be less apt to multi-task if they know they are heading towards a break.
• Use Check-In/Check Out Questions. Some people choose to make questions related to the course (eg “Use one word to describe how you’re feeling about this meeting”) while some people opt for completely random questions (“what is the best Thanksgiving side dish”).
• Use your online platform’s engagement tools. You can create polls, have people annotate, and use the chat pod.
• Zoom has the ability to track whether or not participants are engaged. It measures this as a percent of screen sharing time the app is the primary window. You could assign students an online engagement score. You can also see who is engaged at any given time by clicking on the ‘participant’ panel and seeing who has an inactive icon next to their picture.

Use Strategies that Match with the Size of the Group

• If you have a large group, use breakouts liberally. You can set randomized breakouts and have students in breakouts in less than 10 seconds. Choose groups that are between 2-3 max. Larger groups dilute the necessity for individual participation. If you use breakouts, follow effective transition practices such as being explicit about how long groups will run and what you expect to be discussed/accomplished in the breakout.
• If you have a share-out time after breakouts, make sure to be explicit on how long each group will have to present their share-out, that you expect them to choose someone to share-out, and any other expectations you might have.

Use Strategies that Promote Camera Usage

Active audio and video involvement is the most important thing you need for quality online engagement.

• Show of hands: Ask a question that has a 1-4 likert range and ask people to hold their hand up to the camera to answer the question.
• Thumbs Up/Thumbs down: Ask a yes or no question or check for understanding by asking for a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on the camera.