Zoom teaching bingo

[mahagonny]

I would like to ask/require students to leave video on even if they have no need to speak, but with too many of them for me to view without turning the page on my screen that would just make extra work for me to be policing the situation. And some of them are not much to look at either. Some look like they were in bed three minutes ago. It feels very strange to talk for minutes while hearing nothing, but then again, in real life I also have the experience of asking a question of the group, and no one volunteers an answer. So lack of energy from them is kind of like flies at a picnic. I've accepted it. Of course I have heard students are afraid to speak out of fear of embarrassing themselves in front of the peer group. But then again not having done the reading could also be a reason for that. I'm doing the best I can but I can't wait for this to be over. Meanwhile the dean is telling us they are very stressed and may need extra time for the work. There's no extra time at the end of the semester. Time waits for no one.

[wellfleet]

Nearly all of my students have cameras on during class and it makes a huge difference, but we're also using breakout rooms for group discussions and exercises, with groups reporting back results and questions afterwards, etc.. They are dying to connect with their peers however they can. Kids and pets are welcome (and inevitable).

To facilitate this, I've split my large, two-hour class sessions in half, with about half the class attending each hour. There's asynchronous activity to fill the other half, so I'm not losing raw instructional time. That lessens Zoom fatigue for them and I never have to deal with students I can't see on one gallery view screen. It's worth it to me to run each live class session four times instead of two to facilitate this (I teach two sections of the same course), and the students have been very appreciative.

[EdnaMode]

I just had to send a personal chat message with "Please don't do personal grooming on camera" to a student. Ugh. He was washing up, putting on deodorant, grooming his beard, etc. I hadn't noticed because I was doing equations on the document camera, not looking at the students on the monitor, and another student sent me a private message.