an essay about zoom

What is Zoom?

How to get zoom, getting started with zoom meetings, more tips and tricks, the takeaway, what is zoom a comprehensive guide to the wildly popular video-chatting service for computers and smartphones.

Even if you don't work from home, you've probably heard of Zoom.

In light of the coronavirus crisis, the videoconferencing app has become the standard for connecting with others face-to-face virtually in both business and personal settings.

Zoom is now the video communication platform of choice for federal governments, tech startups, religious communities , and of course regular people looking to chat — and even party — with their friends and family.

Here's everything you need to know about Zoom, including how to download it and get started, along with a few tips and tricks to help you become a video-chatting pro.

Zoom is a cloud-based video communications app that allows you to set up virtual video and audio conferencing, webinars, live chats, screen-sharing, and other collaborative capabilities.

You don't need an account to attend a Zoom meeting, and the platform is compatible with Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android, meaning nearly anyone can access it.

Of course video-conferencing apps aren't new. Zoom is just one in a long line of communication tools that include Skype, Cisco Webex, and Google Meet. For example, here's a quick look at how Zoom compares to Google Meet , Google's videoconferencing platform for businesses:

In short, a big part of Zoom's appeal is simplicity. It's easy to get started, the app is lightweight, and the interface is relatively intuitive to use with popular features like Gallery View — a mode that allows you to see every person on the call at once — built right into the app.

Before we go any further, it's important to note that the platform offers four distinct pricing plans , from basic to enterprise. What's right for you depends on how you plan to use the app.

• Zoom Basic: This is the platform's most popular pricing tier, which makes sense, considering it's free. This tier offers unlimited one-on-one meetings, but videoconferencing with more than three participants is limited to 40 minutes (you can always start another one). If you plan to use it only every once in a while to chat with friends or family, check out our general overview of Zoom's basic features .
• Zoom Pro: The Pro plan is ideal if you work with a small team or plan to regularly conduct extended video calls. Beyond extending the group meeting length from 40 minutes to 24 hours, this tier allows hosts to create IDs for recurring meetings and the capability to store recorded meetings in the cloud, plus advanced usage reports. 
• Zoom Business: A pricing plan to make collaboration easy for small to midsize companies, the Business tier requires at least 10 hosts. But what you get in return is company branding on all invites, dedicated customer support and more features like auto-generated transcription. 
• Zoom Enterprise: This tier is designed for large businesses and sign-up requires a minimum of least 100 hosts. Enterprise offers plenty of perks, including unlimited cloud storage, a dedicated "customer success manager," and the capacity to host 500 people on a single call.

If you decide to change up your plan, you're not locked in forever. Here's a quick guide to help you upgrade or downgrade your Zoom account at any time .

In addition to these pricing tiers, the video-call platform also offers plans built for educators , telehealth firms , and web developers . Each comes with its own features and customer-support systems. 

Downloading Zoom

Once you've decided on a plan, it's simple to download it whether on your computer or your mobile device. The platform is available for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices through the App Store and Google Play Store, respectively.

If you plan on using your computer, you'll want to head over to Zoom's official website and download it. Depending on the type of computer you're using, the process will be slightly different:

• How to download Zoom on your PC  
• How to download Zoom on your Mac computer

You don't need an account to join Zoom meetings , but you must sign up for an account if you plan on hosting, scheduling, and managing your own calls. If you plan to use the platform often, whether for business or pleasure, we recommend downloading the app first, and then signing up for a Zoom account .

Once you've downloaded and installed Zoom, you're ready to get started. 

If you don't have an account and just want to join a Zoom meeting, you can do this a few different ways.

• Through a Zoom Meeting link provided by the host. All you need to do is click that link, and you'll be brought to the meeting. 
• Or you can click "Join" on Zoom's homepage, and enter the Meeting ID manually. 
• Alternatively, if you don't have access to the mobile app or desktop, Zoom supports dial-in calling.

If you do have an account and want to schedule your first Zoom meeting , all you need to do is head to either the app, or your account page on the website, where you can click the "Schedule" option. From there, follow the prompts.

When this is set, you'll be able to invite meeting participants to join your conference call, which you can send via email, contact, or phone number. We've outlined a few different ways to send a Zoom invite , but the easiest way is to share the meeting join link, which you'll receive when you schedule or start a meeting.

Once you're up and running and depending on your plan, Zoom offers varying levels of tools to enhance your video call. Take note of these core features.

• In-meeting chat: With this feature, you're able to send messages privately to an individual or to the group within a meeting. 
• Recording : Every version offers the option to record your meetings, which you can start manually or automatically .
• Screen-sharing : Whether it's for a marketing presentation or a classroom lecture, sharing your screen is an easy way to show others your work.
• Breakout rooms : This allows you to split a single call into individual groups so participants can then have their own conversations.

If you're looking to get more out of Zoom, you may be interested in a few more settings and features. 

Beyond simple tricks like knowing how to mute yourself and others on the call , you should familiarize yourself with the platforms advanced settings:

• Virtual backgrounds : One of the platform's more lively features , virtual background allows you to display and image or video as your background. 
• Raise your hand: Zoom has a feature that lets you virtually "raise your hand," which notifies the meeting organizer that you have a point to make or question to ask, without disrupting the flow of the class or conference. 
• Remote support : A helpful feature that allows you to take control of another participant's screen. 
• Personal meeting ID : Only available for Pro accounts or higher, a personal meeting ID will make your meetings more secure, while also making it easier for your friends and colleagues to connect.
• Waiting room : A feature that lets you control when participants join a meeting.

In addition to these additional features, the platform offers a host of add-ons and integrations aimed at professionals, from adding Zoom to your Google Calendar or Outlook account . 

If you're subscribed to the Pro pricing plan or higher, you gain access to Zoom Rooms , the company's conference room software and hardware that can turn any room into an official conference room. 

For $50 a month , you gain access to the Zoom Room software. This software connects a television or monitor with your computer, an external camera, and a microphone. Put together, you can turn nearly any room into a professional-grade conference room. If you're looking to make your business as Zoom-friendly as possible, Zoom Rooms are a worthwhile investment.

What is Zoombombing?

You might have heard of "Zoombombing" before. This refers to people who gain access to Zoom calls without being invited, and try to wreak havoc. Earlier in the year, there were a number of widely reported Zoombombing cases, which led the company to crack down on them.

Now, whenever you start a call, it'll be password-protected by default, making it exponentially harder for anyone you don't know to gain access. Most calls also have a "waiting room" function, which requires the host to approve anyone who wants access to the call.

For more information, our colleagues have extensive coverage on how Zoom is handling these sort of threats .

Zoom can be simple to use, but difficult to master. Even with these guides, take time to explore the app on your own, and discover everything it has to offer.

With time, using Zoom to meet up with your colleagues will be as natural as meeting someone in real life. And if you ever decide otherwise, you can delete your Zoom account in five simple steps . 

Watch: First impressions of the Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL

• Main content

Zoom Technology and Its Ethical Issues Essay

Problems facing zoom, stakeholders affected by the zoom ethical issues, a possible solution to zoom’s ethical issues, resolution to this problem.

As several in-person engagements have been shifted online due to coronavirus lockdowns, the popularity of the video-sharing platform Zoom has exploded. Issues concerning its trustworthiness have also arisen. Zoom had severe security apprehensions in the past due to the controversy that erupted when users discovered its flaws (Hodge, 2020). Many individuals are still wary of Zoom since they believe it breaches their human dignity and safety due to specific significant changes.

Zoom was not facing one instigation, but rather it had several issues under one key challenge, the security problem. The security threats faced by Zoom included End-to-End encryption debates. Zoom faced severe accusations from certain for its dishonesty together with imbalanced encoding policies and standards. According to Zoom operators, the organization promised end-to-end encoding, but the commission alleges the end-to-end encryption provided was being stored on its server (Hodge, 2020). Zoom admitted through some blog posts that their E2E was not secure since it was violating their customer’s right to privacy.

Zoom had security issues with their chat box; Bugs are an extensive delinquent in various packages and applications. Hackers might allocate malware by creating GIF pictures and cryptogram snippets, this is according to a surveillance company known as Talos. Another problem was Zoom’s conversation window allowed clients to convey any file types, including untitled properties and untitled.txt (Hodge, 2020). These types of documents easily debase the device and relocate malicious encryptions in whichever place they are kept. Another security threat faced by Zoom users is the Bombings and meeting disruptions; it was the major problem that made headlines across all news stations and blog posts. Any person with a meeting ID or even a link could quickly join meetings and spy on an entire conversation. On several occasions, uninvited guests crashed meeting rooms to expose gratified content or make offensive signals (Hodge, 2020). In a Zoom bombing situation, the person hosting loses control of the problem hence the reason why they cannot decide who can be or cannot be part of the meeting. When such situations arise, the host has only one option: to call off the summit.

Zoom has an anti-tempering mechanism that is so vulnerable hence being termed as weak; the primary function of an anti-tampering tool is to shield its systems from attacks and cyber security issues. A hacker can quickly go through Zoom’s server by bypassing the dynamic link library, the dynamic-link library is software made up of codes and commands, and each is made for a specific function across the entire application (Hodge, 2020). Due to the vulnerability of the DLL, someone can easily install malicious links and dis-function Zoom’s DLL, causing leakage of the customer’s data.

There was also a problem with Zoom’s data-sharing agreements. According to an investigation that was carried out on Zoom’s Motherboard, users’ information was being transmitted through the iOS program like when a user accessed the service, their locality, and device specifics without explicitly asking for permission (Hodge, 2020). This data is transferred through Facebook’s software development kit, used for its “Login with Facebook” functionality. Intelligence analysts have also expressed worry over “sketchy” installation malware, which permitted Zoom to rapidly deploy on Macs after a user clicked the transfer link, bypassing the regular security safeguards.

The organization itself, its CEO, shareholders, workers, and Zoom users, Zoom’s colleagues, and commercial partners are among the individuals impacted by the unethical security challenges (Velasquez, 2012). The organization was sued by Michael Drieu, one of its stakeholders, for not revealing the privacy and security breach issue. Zoom and its top executives were implicated in withholding information concerning flaws in the app’s code encryption, such as its purported susceptibility to cyber criminals, as well as the illegal dissemination of personal information to 0.33 entities, including Facebook and Google.

Individuals working with the Zoom organization as its employees were also affected since they had to be retrenched and go home until the security and privacy concerns were addressed. Most of the employees had to endure many struggles adjusting to life without a living. However, according to the moral and ethical concerns raised, there was no other option other than going home until the privacy issue was solved (Velasquez, 2012). They are up for the challenge because they believe the issues will be resolved and go back to the office.

Eric Yuan, the chief executive officer of Zoom, had to address the security issues concern. He apologized and promised to take it as a challenge. In his speech, he mentioned that he did not know that Zoom as a platform would soar so fast before the coronavirus pandemic. Zoom is being used by millions of people across the globe for both leisure and work since most countries are on lockdown (Velasquez, 2012). Yuan says that when the product was being designed, he did not have a foresight of it serving across the globe, so there are so many challenges coming up.

The solution to Zoom bombing; New features should be introduced to curb this menace. These features include making passwords compulsory when joining a meeting room using the meeting ID option, creating a waiting room, and adding a blocking feature. Additional features such as enabling the host to decide who can share their screen, adding two-factor authentication, and adding a lock meeting feature, among others, could also help secure the site. All these features can be placed under the settings option on the Zoom app. An additional protection layer can work in conjunction with End-to-End encryption to tackle the E2E controversies and help solve the issue (Velasquez, 2012).

Integration of the “Captcha” feature to handle the brute force attack issue will make it possible to prevent attacks from other bots. In order to play nice with devices from Apple, Zoom should fix its bugging function by changing the local host on its web server settings and allowing mac users to uninstall the application from the toolbar on their devices manually. The organization should also be able to enhance its default password by enabling both alphabets and numerals in password creation.

Although Zoom has faced all those challenges, it still has some pros that might interest some individuals. There are a couple of fantastic ideas that might help one decide whether to continue using Zoom or seize from using it completely. The ideas explain why Zoom could still be a success despite all the problems; it still has the following advantages; it is easy to use because it is very user-friendly. In some situations, video calls and teleconferencing are usually challenging to maintain but Zoom hides and eliminates the ability to do complex tweaking to make it more efficient (Hodge, 2020).

Zoom has break-out rooms, which enable the ability to divide a big group of users into small groups and call them back simultaneously. This control type is very efficient for classroom teaching and meetings with huge numbers because it enables easy audience control. Streaming content from other platforms is also an additional feature that gives Zoom a plus; the application integrates with youtube. Facebook does not allow data collection and gives the coordinator the ability to access Facebook directly and stream content from there (Hodge, 2020).

Several other online platforms can facilitate video conferencing; among them is Webex, Google meet, and a couple of other social media and video chat apps. Webex has some features almost similar to Zoom’s; it can accommodate video sessions of up to one hundred members and has no restrictions on the video calls (Velasquez, 2012). It also offers end-to-end encryption for the calls through the encryption is not automatic. Call administrators are the ones who are supposed to turn on the encryption feature. There is also an option on whether the encryption feature can be automatic or manual and whether it can be optional or manual for each session. On the other hand, Google meet has more outstanding features, such as a video conferencing room that can accommodate up to two hundred and fifty participants and live steam up to a hundred thousand in a single session.

In general, the big question of whether the platform is still secure for use can be drawn from different platforms trying to follow up on the security issues and privacy concerns. Some individuals say that the platform is secure, while some still say that it is vulnerable. The officials from the company claim that the security concerns have been addressed and new security measures have been put in place, and are being tested on how efficient they are. Zoom is working aggressively to solve and adhere to the security concerns that have pulled the company down.

Hodge, R. (2020). Zoom: Former Dropbox staff say Zoom stalled on security fix. CNet. Web.

Velasquez, M. G. (2012). Ethics and business. In M. G. Velasquez, Business ethics; concepts and cases 7th ed.,46-56.Pearson.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, November 20). Zoom Technology and Its Ethical Issues. https://ivypanda.com/essays/zoom-technology-and-its-ethical-issues/

"Zoom Technology and Its Ethical Issues." IvyPanda , 20 Nov. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/zoom-technology-and-its-ethical-issues/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Zoom Technology and Its Ethical Issues'. 20 November.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Zoom Technology and Its Ethical Issues." November 20, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/zoom-technology-and-its-ethical-issues/.

1. IvyPanda . "Zoom Technology and Its Ethical Issues." November 20, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/zoom-technology-and-its-ethical-issues/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Zoom Technology and Its Ethical Issues." November 20, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/zoom-technology-and-its-ethical-issues/.

• End-to-End Encryption: Hash, Passwords, and Security
• “End-to-End Lean Management” by Robert J. Trent
• Virtual Trading From End-to-End Websites
• Zoom for Online Learning Updates
• Zoom Video Communications Inc.'s Innovative Performance
• Legal Issues of Zoom Car Company
• Cost Comparison of Zoom and WebEx Webconfering Software
• Distant Learning and Useful Digital Tools
• Zoom's Success and Washington Prime Group's Failure: Impact of the COVID-19
• Netflix, Tesla Motors, and Zoom Managing Growth
• Discussion: Google Making Us Stupid
• JMeter and Locust Load Tests for Websites
• Should the Internet Be Regulated?
• "What Does the Internet Teach Your Teen About Sex?" Summary
• Internet Technology and Impact on Human Behavior

Teaching United States History

What we teach, how we teach it, and why, the pros and cons of teaching with zoom.

Is technology always student centered? How can teachers design online lessons to address students’ needs? In this blog post, I talk about the pros and cons of Zoom—a communications software that allows video conferencing—from the perspective of a student and an instructor.

Zoom facilitates communication across continents, and, in this respect, is remarkable. For the past two years, I have used Zoom to study Nahuatl with Dr. John Sullivan and Eduardo de la Cruz, Cruz, both of whom teach at the University of Utah . However, face-to-face classes at Utah are only offered in the summer. During the academic year, Eduardo and John frequently travel between the United States, Europe, and Mexico. Needless to say, learning Nahuatl in a traditional classroom setting is impossible for much of the year. With Zoom, however, I was able to take online lessons and further my Nahuatl skills even though my instructors were in faraway places. Not only did these Zoom lessons benefit me, they also benefited students all over the country. In order to accommodate for the different time zones, we chose the times that we had available and then met at a time that suited everyone. The ease with which Zoom offers video conferencing made these classes practical and enjoyable.

During the summer of 2019, I had the privilege of working as an online teaching assistant for a writing class at Duke University— Composing the Internship Experience: Digital Rhetoric and Social Media Discourse . For this course, I held weekly Zoom meetings for undergraduate students scattered throughout the country. Students held internships in places such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. To accommodate their schedules, I held two meetings each week. The morning and afternoon were dedicated to students in the eastern part of the country while evening lessons targeted students in California. Zoom allows class sizes to expand and contract seamlessly. Instructors simply create a link for each Zoom meeting through the web portal and then share it with their students. Once Zoom is installed on a computer, students simply click on the link to join their online class at the designated time. Best of all, it is free of charge.

Teaching with Zoom is greatly facilitated by certain features, which help the class to stay focused. Firstly, the chat function allows instructors to insert URLs, pictures, and documents so that the entire class can see these materials in real time. Zoom also has a screen-share option, which enables instructors to share their desktop with the entire class. In my writing class, I would use the screen share option when I wanted students to focus on a specific paragraph that I had selected for a given lesson. Since screenshare automatically projects onto the students’ laptops, students could instantly read along with me. These features helped students to stay on track, even though they were not physically in the room with me.

However, sometimes Zoom lessons can be hindered by technological difficulties. This fact is a general drawback of web-based technologies and does not, necessarily, indicate a fault of Zoom Video Communications. Bandwidth is one such issue. For Zoom to be effective, you really need a lot of it. Without sufficient bandwidth, the sound drops in and out, forcing students and instructors to ask each other to repeat themselves. In this sense, bandwidth is a potential problem for students from, or temporarily residing in, countries with less infrastructure. Tech companies like Facebook have attempted to resolve this problem by creating apps that can function on 2G networks such as Facebook Lite . To my knowledge, however, Zoom has yet to create something similar.

Moreover, instructors need to plan for the learning curve required for students to use Zoom effectively. I would caution instructors from assuming that students are automatically tech savvy just because they can use a smartphone. I experienced this issue in my online summer classes. Many of my students had not fully installed the Zoom application at the time of our first lesson. This meant that the first week of lessons took slightly longer than expected. While this did not cause any major problems, I realized that I had unwittingly fallen into the trap of thinking that Zoom would be a piece of cake for twenty-first century students. Instructors should account for this extra time in their lesson plans. Downtime is another factor that teachers need to think about when using Zoom. I found myself waiting a few minutes each week as students gradually joined the lesson. Someone in San Francisco may not enter the virtual classroom at the exact same moment as a student in New York.

Ideally, instructors should only offer Zoom lessons to extremely disciplined students. As teachers, we know that technological distractions can be a problem for students. Yet, we also know that this problem is not going away any time soon. Since instructors cannot see the screens of their students, unless they share them with the class, we have no idea what everyone is doing. Consequently, students prone to distraction are enabled. I suspect, for example, that some of my students had other webpages open during some portion of my classes. Some students even turned off their camera so that all anyone could see was a name projected onto a black square. Although this problem was later rectified, it is something that caught me off guard. If distractions could easily derail the class, instructors may want reconsider which students they teach via Zoom.

Communication between students during class is another important consideration for online instructors. I found that the interaction between students could be somewhat stilted if they did not already know each other. The age range for my online class was nineteen to twenty-one. Presumably, a virtual classroom of older students could engage in more fluid conversation with one another. I also noticed that the lack of face-to-face contact made it harder for students to stay focused throughout the course of an entire lesson. Pair work is next to impossible with Zoom because each user hears whomever is speaking instantly. There is no way for students to separate into smaller groups and talk among themselves. Therefore, Zoom lessons should be designed for a relatively small class size to increase the level of student participation in each class.

On the whole, I would say that Zoom is much more beneficial than not. It provides easy-to-use video conferencing for the average user and, by doing so, increases inclusivity for those far removed from the instructor. Assuming instructors account for the potential technological difficulties ahead of time, then teaching with Zoom can be a highly effective tool for learners around the world. However, to make Zoom lessons as student centered as possible, instructors need to account for the technological drawbacks in order to implement and devise lessons that maximize student participation. You will most likely experience some technological difficulties with online lessons. However, the flexibility that Zoom provides keeps students’ needs at the forefront.

Related posts

Teaching the zeitgeist through bernie sanders, teaching sex, power, and conquest with primary sources, 6 thoughts on “ the pros and cons of teaching with zoom ”.

Is there a limit for the number of students who cab attend the class. Thank you

Thank you for your comment. If you would like to reach a thousand or more students at the same time, you will have to pay Zoom for a license. To my knowledge, you can host up to 100 students without having to pay any fees. I hope this helps.

I do believe Zoom offers “breakout rooms” so you can send small groups of students to work separately. I plan to do that soon during dance lessons.

Zoom helps both learning and teaching process to progress regardless of disasters like Covid 19.

Pingback: The Importance of Web 2.0 in a Covid Stricken World – COMM2400 – Social Media Tools and Strategies

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• Columbia University in the City of New York
• Office of Teaching, Learning, and Innovation
• University Policies
• Columbia Online
• Academic Calendar
• Resources and Technology
• Instructional Technologies
• Teaching in All Modalities

Active Learning for Your Online Classroom: Five Strategies Using Zoom

Moving your class sessions to a virtual space, such as Zoom video conferencing, brings new opportunities for active learning and student engagement. This resource provides simple strategies that combine active learning principles with online tools so students can encounter and engage with information and ideas, and reflect on their learning. These strategies apply to both small and large class sizes, subject to the participant limit of your video conferencing program and license.

For ways to maintain privacy and security in your online class sessions, please refer to CTL’s Zoom Security and Privacy Resource .

On this page:

• What is Active Learning?

Columbia Supported Online Tools for Active Learning

Active learning strategies, additional resources.

Cite this resource: Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2020). Active Learning for your Online Classroom: Five Strategies Using Zoom. Columbia University. Retrieved [today’s date] from https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/teaching-with-technology/teaching-online/active-learning/

Zoom: Annotation and Whiteboard Tools For more details on how to use these tools, please see: Using annotation tools on a shared screen or whiteboard and Sharing a whiteboard.

What is Active Learning? 

Bonwell and Eison describe active learning strategies as “instructional activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing 1 .” In Creating Significant Learning Experiences , L. Dee Fink builds upon Bonwell and Eison’s definition by describing a holistic view of active learning that includes all of the following components: Information and Ideas, Experience, and Reflective Dialogue 2 .  This framework can be a helpful tool to consider how your students…

• e.g., by watching videos or reading PDFs in advance, or from a short presentation you give using Zoom’s Share Screen feature
• e.g., through discussions with their peers using Zoom’s Breakout Rooms feature and documenting their conversations in collaborative Google Docs
• e.g., by spending the last five minutes of the online class session engaging in reflective writing and sharing their thoughts through an open-ended poll on Poll Everywhere .

…to meet the student learning objective(s) for your course.

The CTL is here to help!

If you have questions or would like support in developing and implementing active learning in your online course, please reach out to the CTL at [email protected] . You can also get one-on-one support via phone or Zoom during our virtual office hours .

In this resource, we will reference the following online tools supported by Columbia University: 

• Share Screen —share your screen, your student’s screen, or a virtual whiteboard
• Breakout Rooms —divide the main virtual room into smaller virtual rooms
• Polling —launch multiple choice polls
• Nonverbal Feedback —allow students to express opinions by clicking on icons
• Poll Everywhere —audience response system for polling
• LionMail (Google) Docs , Sheets , Slides —collaborative documents

*Note: If you do not see any of the above Zoom features in your Zoom meeting space, you may need to enable them first.

If you have questions about teaching with any of the above tools, please reach out to the CTL at [email protected] . You can also get one-on-one support via phone or Zoom during our virtual office hours .

The active learning strategies you select should serve the course learning objectives for your students. Remember, the goal of active learning is not simply for your students to do things, but to also think about what they are doing. As you learn more about the following strategies, consider how effective each would be in promoting the learning you desire from your students.

Here are some questions to think about when selecting an active learning strategy:

• What skill should my students be able to perform by the end of our online class session?
• Which active learning strategy will allow my students to practice this skill?
• When will my students encounter and engage with information and ideas? When will they reflect on what they’ve learned? (Any of these active learning components can be done before, during, or after the online class session.)

Strategy 1: Polling

Polling is a quick, easy way to check the opinions or thought processes of your students by posing a statement or question and gathering their responses in real time. Zoom’s Polling feature allows for simple multiple-choice polls, including Likert-type questions that ask your students to state their level of agreement with a statement, assessing the level of student interest on a list of topics, or binary yes/no or true/false questions. Simple polls can be used at the start, end, or at select points during an online class session to engage and assess your students.

• Zoom’s Polling feature

Amount of pre-class preparation required

• Instructor: Low (<15 min)
• Student: Low (<15 min)

How to Implement

Determine your purpose for conducting a simple multiple-choice poll in your online class session by considering the following:

• What information would you like to get from your students in real-time?
• How will you use the poll results / information collected?

Here are some possible ways you can use polls for active learning in your online class session:

• e.g., Which of the following career paths is your top choice at this moment?
• e.g., Which of the following best represents your familiarity with the concept of atomic orbitals?
• e.g., “Genetically modified foods should not be permitted for human consumption.” Agree or Disagree?
• e.g., Which of the following factors do you think has the largest impact on the rate of DNA replication in a eukaryotic cell?
• e.g., Which of the following topics would you like to go over as a class?
• e.g., Which of the following activities are most helpful in helping you learn the skills required for this course?

Create the Zoom poll (see Zoom Help Center to learn how) and determine how much time your students will need to respond to it. Make sure the question title and prompt is clearly worded and not open to misinterpretation.

Prior to launching the poll, provide verbal and written instructions on how to complete the poll. Once launched, you will be able to see in real time the number of students and the percentage of the class that have responded to the poll, the time elapsed, and the results of the poll.

End the poll when the allocated time is up. You can then choose whether to show the class the results of the poll. Either way, be sure to directly address or have your students respond to the results of the poll, and relate it back to the purpose of the poll.

Alternative Tools for Polling

• CourseWorks (Canvas) Quiz has an ungraded survey feature that can be used for polls both synchronously and asynchronously.
• PollEverywhere can be used for more advanced polling activities such as using open-ended text questions or images. Unlike Zoom, the results from PollEverywhere can be directly transported to CourseWorks (Canvas).

Strategy 2: Think-Pair-Share

This active learning strategy involves posing a short problem, scenario, or question to your students and giving them the time and opportunity to complete the following steps:

• Think through the problem, scenario, or question individually.
• Pair with a partner to discuss.
• Share their findings or takeaways with the rest of the class.

This strategy not only gives your students time to process and apply their knowledge and skills on their own first, it also gives them the opportunity to consult and collaborate with a peer. This process usually elicits more thoughtful responses while also lowering the stakes of sharing with the rest of the class.

• Zoom’s Share Screen feature
• Zoom’s Breakout Rooms feature
• Think : First, pose a short problem, scenario, or question for your students to work through on their own for about 30 seconds to a minute. Read the question out loud while also displaying it on a slide that you share with your students using Zoom’s Share Screen feature. As your students are thinking through the problem, click on Zoom’s Breakout Rooms tool so you can enter the number of breakout rooms needed in order for each to contain a pair of students. Zoom conveniently displays the number of participants per room based on the number of participants present and the number of rooms you select. If you have an odd number of students, subtract one from the total number of students and divide that by two to get the number of rooms you should create; Zoom will automatically assign one of the breakout rooms with three students instead of a pair.
• Pair : When your students are ready to pair up, let Zoom automatically assign them to the breakout rooms. Give your students about 5 minutes to introduce themselves to their partners and share their thoughts on the assigned problem. To help your students keep track of the given problem and directions, you can broadcast the problem and instructions through a message to all the breakout rooms.
• Share : When your students are ready to share, close the breakout rooms so all your students return to the main room. Ask for volunteers to share their answers or discussion takeaways by having them use the hand-raise feature in Zoom. Unmute one volunteer at a time so they can acknowledge their partner and share their response with the entire class. Mute the volunteer who has spoken before unmuting the next one. Repeat this process until you are satisfied with the number of contributions and/or perspectives shared.

Alternative active learning strategies with similar setups

• Note-Taking Pairs 3 : Students work in pairs to improve their individual class notes.
• Three-Step Interview 3 : Students work in pairs and take turns interviewing each other, and report what they learn to another pair.
• Peer Instruction 4 : Students first answer a given poll question on their own. Then, students pair up and explain their rationale. Finally, students answer the poll question again.

Strategy 3: Minute Paper

A minute paper is a short “paper” that students individually complete in a minute (or more realistically, under five minutes) in response to a given prompt. Minute papers provide students with opportunities to reflect on course content and disciplinary skills as well as their self-awareness as learners (see the CTL’s resource on metacognition to learn more). This active learning strategy simultaneously allows you to quickly check your students’ knowledge. Minute papers can be assigned at the start, during, or at the end of your online class session as you see fit.

• Poll Everywhere

Before your online class session, write an open-ended prompt that students can respond to in less than five minutes. You can vary the prompt to target specific knowledge and skill sets or solicit big picture free responses.

Example prompts include:

• What questions about today’s topic are you most interested in exploring?
• What was the most important point of today’s lesson?
• Share an experience from your everyday life that illustrates this principle.
• What steps will you take to maximize your learning for the upcoming test?
• Reflecting on the essay you just submitted, what would you have done differently that would improve your essay?

When your prompt is ready, use it to create an open-ended poll in Poll Everywhere (external to Zoom). Using Poll Everywhere to collect minute paper responses allows you to either display the responses as they come in or download a CSV spreadsheet containing all the responses to skim for trends and themes later.

While student responses are never displayed with student identities during the poll, you may need that information for the purpose of assigning participation grades or to respond to students individually. For this information to be recorded in the CSV spreadsheet, you will need to restrict the poll to registered participants only. Your students will then need to log in to their Columbia Poll Everywhere accounts to participate in the poll.

During your online class session, when you are ready for students to complete their minute papers, activate your open-ended poll and use Zoom’s Share Screen tool to share the Poll Everywhere window with your students. While the instructions for responding to the poll will be shown via shared screen, you should also read the instructions out loud to ensure all students receive that information. 

Give your students about five minutes to go to the displayed Poll Everywhere site and type in their responses to the minute paper prompt. Depending on your goal, you have the option of addressing select responses as they come in or compiling the results after class so you can address them at the start of the next one.

• What’s the Problem 5 : Students categorize example problems according to the principles and strategies needed to solve them.
• Muddiest Point 6 : Students share their responses to the prompt “What was the muddiest (most confusing) point in _____ ?”

Strategy 4: Small Group Discussions

Small group discussions are one way for your students to delve more deeply into a given problem or issue. You can pose an open-ended question or problem, or provide your students with a scenario or case study to work through. The duration is dependent on the task. Groups can then present their results or findings to the rest of the class.

• Zoom’s Nonverbal Feedback feature (including hand raise)
• Google Docs , Sheets , Slides (collaborative documents)
• Instructor: Moderate (15–60 minutes)

Reflect on the learning objective that would most benefit from small group discussion. From this learning objective, develop the discussion prompt that you will assign to your students. For example:

• Learning Objective: Analyze Figure 3 of the assigned research article.
• Discussion Prompt: How well does the data shown in the figure support the author’s claims?

When assigning the small group discussion, be sure to include clear instructions on what your students are supposed to do. Examples include:

• How many students will be in each group
• How much time they have for the discussion
• What they need to report back to the class and how much time they have to do so
• Upholding discussion guidelines that they previously agreed to

Because your students are having these discussions completely online, it is best not to have too many students in each group; 3-4 students per group for a 10-minute small group discussion allows each student to contribute substantially to the discussion.

To help facilitate the small group discussion and ensure that all students engage, either assign or have your students volunteer for the following roles:

• Facilitator + Timekeeper—keep the discussion focused on the assigned prompt
• Notetaker—record the main points of the discussion on a collaborative document like Google Docs or Slides
• Challenger—push the group to view the problem or issue from different perspectives
• Reporter—report the main takeaways of the discussion back to the rest of the class

You could have students rotate roles across the semester so that they get to experience and learn the different skill sets associated with each role. 

Let your students know that you, and if applicable, your co-instructor(s) and/or TA(s), may be dropping into each breakout room periodically to check their progress and answer any questions, but that they do not have to stop their discussion if they do not need anything from you.

After providing your students with both verbal and written instructions, give them a minute to ask you any clarifying questions before you send them to their breakout rooms.

When the class is ready, use Zoom to automatically divide your students into breakout rooms. You can set the breakout rooms to close automatically after a set duration. This adds a countdown timer in the breakout rooms informing your students of the remaining time they have. As students are discussing in their breakout rooms, stop by several breakout rooms to see how the discussion is going and answer any questions, if any. You may also broadcast a message to all breakout rooms to solicit questions. Your students can always request for help from their breakout rooms by clicking the Ask for Help button, which alerts you to their request and prompts you to join their breakout room.

When time is up, if you did not set the breakout rooms to automatically close, manually close them so all students return to the main room. Ask all the student reporters to identify themselves using the hand-raise button (part of Zoom’s Nonverbal Feedback feature). When a student reporter is ready to share with the class, unmute that particular student and have them share their screen with the class. Other students can ask questions via the chat window. When the student reporter is done presenting, you can unmute the rest of that group to allow them to solicit and answer questions from their peers.

• Test-Taking Teams 3 : Students work in small groups to prepare for a test. Students then take the test individually and submit their responses. Immediately after, students retake the test in their small groups, working to find consensus on their responses.
• Jigsaw 3 : Students work in small groups. Each group becomes an expert in a different topic. New groups are formed, comprising at least one expert on each topic. In these new groups, each student teaches their peers the topic they became an expert on.

Strategy 5: Short Student Presentations

Short presentations provide an opportunity for students to engage in peer instruction. This type of activity invites students to synthesize and communicate their knowledge. Students can be asked to research an issue of interest to them that is related to the course topic or work on a problem outside of class, and to present their findings during an upcoming online class session. This allows students to link course content with their own interests and lived experiences, and learn from their peers.

• Google Slides
• Student: Significant (>60 minutes)

Identify a course learning objective that would greatly benefit from having students explore the topic further on their own. For example, you could have students use their analytical skills that they developed during the course to analyze a different area, setting, artifact, or scenario of their choice. Alternatively, you could have your students design proposals to address a problem raised in class.

Assign student presentations with sufficient time for your students to prepare their presentation, e.g., at least one to two weeks in advance. Be sure to provide specific instructions regarding the format and duration of the presentation, e.g., “The presentation is 5 minutes long with 10 minutes for audience questions,” as well as any criteria for evaluation, which could be represented as a rubric.

This strategy works best if you provide students with preliminary feedback on their presentations prior to your online class session. Consider having a short online meeting with each student presenter or checking in via email to provide feedback on their presentation and to answer their questions at least a few days before your online class session.

When it is time for your students to present during your online class session, first remind the class of the purpose and format of the student presentations. Encourage your students to be active listeners during the presentation, e.g., reflect on how the presentation might apply to your interests, explore how the presentation enriches your perspectives on the topic, type your questions into the Zoom chat, or write down your main takeaways from the presentation.

When the student presenter is ready, unmute their microphone and allow them to share their screen with the class.

While the student is presenting, you may monitor questions that are being submitted by other students to the Zoom chat. Once the presentation is finished, select a few questions for the presenter to address.

When the student presenter is done answering questions, consider having all your students reflect on what they learned. For example, you could ask your students to summarize their main takeaways from the presentation or describe how the presentation connects with different aspects of the course. Have your students share their reflections on a discussion board on CourseWorks (Canvas) or an open-ended poll on Poll Everywhere. You can skim through these reflections to see what your students gained from the student presentations.

• Digital scavenger hunt: Students find or create media (images, video clips, audio clips) that they think best represent assigned course concepts to share with the class.
• Book club 5 : Students choose from a list of suggested books on course content and form corresponding book clubs. Each book club presents a final report to the rest of the class, while other students identify common themes and differences between the presented books and the books they chose in their own book club.
• Student group presentations: Students work in small groups outside of class on an assigned project and present their findings during the online class session. Other students in class focus on asking questions and linking the presentation to course content.
• Working in a virtual classroom requires patience. Begin with simple low stakes activities for you and your students to get comfortable with the new format and provide time and opportunity for your students to ask you questions. Eventually, instructors, TAs, and students will gain proficiency with these online tools.
• Seek to minimize barriers that students may face in order to participate in the activities you plan for your online class session. Factors to consider include access to reliable technology and conducive spaces, student physical and mental abilities, and timing. For ways to make online learning accessible for all your students, please refer to CTL’s Accessibility Resource .
• Do a test-run of each activity you plan to use before your online class session, preferably with a CTL Learning Designer or a teaching colleague. Given the number of user-specific settings in Zoom, you will want to ensure that all the features you will be using have been enabled prior to your online class session. Some features cannot be enabled once your online class session has launched.

Community Building in Online and Hybrid (HyFlex) Courses

Collaborative Learning Online

Facilitating and Promoting Student Engagement in the Online, Synchronous Classroom (Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning)

Online Instructional Activities Index (University of Illinois, Springfield)

Tips & Tricks: Teachers Educating on Zoom (Zoom) 

How to Be a Better Online Teacher (Flower Darby, Northern Arizona University)

• Bonwell, C.C. & Eison, J.A. (1991). Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report 1. Washington, D.C.: George Washington University.
• Fink, D.L. (2003). Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Barkley, E. F., Cross, K. P., & Major, C. H. (2014). Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty . John Wiley & Sons
• Mazur, E. (2013). Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual. Pearson Higher Ed.
• Barkley, E. F. (2009). Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty . John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. 
• Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers (2nd ed). Jossey-Bass Publishers.
• First Steps for Moving a Class Online
• Graduate Student TAs: Adapting Your Teaching
• Inclusive Teaching and Learning Online
• Asynchronous Learning Across Time Zones
• Virtual Office Hours
• Teaching with CourseWorks
• Teaching with Zoom
• Teaching with Panopto
• Video Production Best Practices

The CTL researches and experiments.

The Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning provides an array of resources and tools for instructional activities.

This website uses cookies to identify users, improve the user experience and requires cookies to work. By continuing to use this website, you consent to Columbia University's use of cookies and similar technologies, in accordance with the Columbia University Website Cookie Notice .

Online? In Person? The Power of Letting Students Choose

Explore more.

• Classroom Management
• Course Design
• Digital Learning

I t’s been a full year since thousands of university faculty and millions of students made what’s likely the largest adjustment in instructional delivery in history, migrating mid-semester from physical classrooms to online ones. As the possible end of this great transition nears, higher education is exhaling a collective sigh of relief—but there is a new question facing most university faculty and administrators: now what?

Since last summer, university leaders have been busy determining when and how campuses can safely reopen. But as strategist and professor Vijay Govindarajan pointed out during an HBP webinar on COVID-19’s impact on the future of higher education last May , “while it’s important to attend to the challenge of the present, it’s equally important for universities and faculty to see the moment for what it is—a seismic shift within higher education.”

Those words ring even truer today. As most of us know by now, higher education is unlikely to fully return to pre–COVID-19 course delivery models. Millions of students have now experienced the intensive integration of technology into their courses, and this has likely reset their expectations for the future. Professor Govindarajan challenges us to use the lessons learned from the great transition to explore—more permanently—new models for instructional delivery.

Last fall, I did just that. I piloted a delivery approach, called the Choice Model, and implemented it in two of my principles-level business courses at Illinois College. The model, which allows students to choose, every day, whether they’ll attend class in person or online (via Zoom), was positively received by students. When surveyed, they said they preferred the Choice Model to all other delivery approaches combined (including fully in-person learning) by more than a two-to-one margin. Here, I will explain how I came up with and implemented this new model, how my students reacted, and how I plan to integrate it into my course design in the future.

What a Difference Autonomy Makes

While many colleges and universities have remained fully online since last March, many others—my institution among them—decided to open for face-to-face instruction for the Fall 2020 semester, with the first week and last two weeks taught remotely. As faculty, we were encouraged and supported to find ways to use technology to reduce student-to-student contact (per pandemic guidelines) and enhance learning. Empathizing with my students, I imagined that our announcement of in-person instruction was met with a combination of excitement about returning to the classroom and varying degrees of anxiety regarding the virus and what the fall might bring.

In times of stress, one of the factors that empowers individuals is the ability to exert a degree of control over their environment . I quickly determined that giving my students a choice in how they received their education would allow them to exert greater autonomy. Not to mention, developing students’ autonomy is a critical learning goal, and an explicit one in many UK universities .

This all got me thinking: if students were allowed to make choices in their education relative to the pandemic, perhaps their anxiety would decline and their performance would increase.

I developed the Choice Model in direct response to these factors. It’s similar to a hybrid model, but with one key distinction. The Choice Model lets each student choose—every day—whether they prefer to attend class in person or online.

Let’s dig more deeply into the model and how it came to be.

“One of the factors that empowers individuals is the ability to exert a degree of control over their environment.”

The Choice Model: Combining Flexibility and Engagement

During the summer of 2020, I began exploring students’ concerns about available course delivery options. Two common themes emerged:

Fear of the unknown. In conversations with former students, several said they would be hesitant to commit fulltime to a delivery format they weren’t familiar with (namely online learning). And they said risk was high: if the format wasn’t right for them, the only options would be to drop the course or to suffer through it for the entire semester.

Concerns about staying engaged and motivated. Several years ago, before my time at Illinois College, I conducted surveys with community college students about their experiences learning online. Their feedback was largely negative. Most had been in online courses that provided content, assignments, and a schedule of due dates, and students found it hard to be motivated or engaged.

Thus, an ideal course delivery system needed to provide students with a choice that enabled each student to move between delivery systems as their comfort level and environment changed. Giving students a daily choice could provide some feelings of control and reduced anxiety, while also allowing students new to digital course delivery to try it out. If it didn’t work for them, they could always return to attending in person.

For this model to work, however, I knew I needed a way to engage students both in the classroom and online. For me, the learning platform Echo360 became the critical link that elevated the Choice Model from other hybrid approaches. To keep in-class students and those participating on Zoom engaged in long class periods, I used Echo360 to ask students multiple choice questions every 10 minutes or so, checking in on students’ understanding of the content we had just covered in the session.

I graded responses on a mastery basis. Students received five points if they obtained a score of 70 percent or higher on the Echo360 questions asked on a given day, and zero points if they answered less than 70 percent correct. For students who paid attention and took notes, these questions were easy—for those who did not, they proved to be very difficult. As the semester progressed, the average scores on these questions increased (as did students’ exam scores, by one to two percent per exam). Similarly, student performance on an end-of-semester comprehensive final exam rose from 70.5 percent to 77.67 percent.

I also used the Echo360 platform to understand how my students would be attending class on any given day. The first question I always asked at the start of each session was, Are you attending today’s class:

A) In Person

B) Via Zoom

This allowed me to track not only what percentage of each student’s sessions were attended in-person versus on Zoom, but also the performance of in-person attendees versus Zoom attendees on the check-in questions asked throughout the session.

Positive Results, Positive Attitudes

What are the benefits of the choice model.

I’ve found the Choice Model, in which students can choose whether they attend class each day in person or online, benefits students, faculty, and administration in the following ways:

Student Benefits

Ease of attendance, ease of use. Requires only a smart phone and an internet connection to attend class. Echo360 is a free student download and takes five minutes to learn.

Fewer COVID-related anxieties. Students can decide whether to attend in person or online based on how secure they feel at the time of each class.

Faculty Benefits

Reduced risk of virus transmission. De-densifies the classroom, bringing fewer students into close contact with the professor and allowing for greater social distancing.

Relative ease of use. The only additional technology needed was a second webcam, a wireless lapel mic, and licenses for Zoom and Echo360.

Administration Benefits

Ability to maintain class sizes and avoid additional staffing. Due to the need to social distance in classrooms, a classroom that normally holds 35+ students might now only hold 15, necessitating additional classrooms and staffing. The Choice Model allows those students to voluntarily separate so that only one classroom and one educator is needed.

I also saw comprehensive final exam scores increase by seven points in a Choice Model class over another section taught fully in person a year earlier. Students credited the use of the check-in Echo360 questions during each class session as being helpful for keeping them engaged with the material during 70- and 100-minute classes.

Attendance also increased from 85 percent in Fall 2019 to 93 percent in Fall 2020, since the most common reasons for not being in class—not feeling well, being unable to get to campus, having to be out of town, etc.—were no longer barriers. An additional benefit of the Choice Model was the ease of teaching students who were placed in quarantine or isolation. In these instances, all I needed to do was to email the student to check on their health and well-being, and then to remind them to simply attend class using Zoom, if they were feeling up for it.

By the end of the fall semester, the Choice Model seemed to be a popular innovation with students. In a post-semester survey, I asked students to rate the model on a scale of 1 to 7 (with 7 being high), and the mean response was 6.7. When asked to rank the Choice Model among other course delivery alternatives—such as fully in person, fully on Zoom, and a 50/50 hybrid approach—30 out of 44 students ranked the Choice Model as their number-one preferred course delivery model, well ahead of fully in-person instruction.

Responding to Challenges

The model was not flawless, however. One challenge of the Choice Model was the passive nature of Zoom attendees. Echo360 was effective at engaging students with the course content, but getting students to engage with each other was another issue. Since these were principles-level classes, few of the students were familiar to me prior to the start of the course, which also made relationship building a slower process. In a post-COVID world, I intend to make greater effort to build those relationships when implementing this model.

A second challenge involved teaching quantitative material through the Choice Model. Students attending through Zoom seemed to struggle more with material that involved quantitative problem solving compared to their peers attending in person. Providing Zoom attendees with recordings of classes and additional video support was unsuccessful. A greater level of coaching on my part and increased diligence on the part of students was needed.

A third challenge was that, while giving students choices is generally positive and empowering, not every student choice is going to be a good choice. One of the unfortunate consequences of the Choice Model was that some students who needed the structure and peer-support of a classroom chose instead to attend through Zoom. The effect of not choosing wisely became apparent when grades were issued at midterm. While the number of poorly performing students was not significantly greater than usual, the extent of their poor performance was concerning, with most of the poor performers averaging below 50 percent.

Follow-up conversations with Zoom students who were performing poorly revealed that they had two other things in common—they attended class with their cameras off, and they were multitasking while attending (eating lunch, cleaning the room, working out, etc.). Most of the students with low performance said that they chose to attend via Zoom specifically for the convenience and so they could multitask. I had to explain to them that their strategy was not working. Many of those students chose to continue attending via Zoom, even after being told they would do better by being in the classroom. However, in most cases, students’ self-reported multitasking ended, their in-class quiz scores generally increased, and their performance improved to the point of passing.

“Giving students a daily choice could provide some feelings of control and reduced anxiety, while also allowing students new to digital course delivery to try it out.”

Imagining a Post-COVID Future That Includes the Choice Model

While there are some issues and limitations with the Choice Model that still need refinement, I am confident this model is applicable well beyond the current pandemic for the following reasons:

From a student perspective, the Choice Model adds value to the student experience by allowing students to choose the form their education will take each day. Even if a student chooses the same option every day, the fact that they have a choice at all still has value.

The model offers convenience and flexibility to students, especially for those who prefer in-person instruction but do not want to be locked into being on campus. For the type of student who often has work or personal conflicts, the Choice Model provides a Zoom option as a safety net. Conversely, a student who is unsure how well they will learn in an online environment also has a safety net, knowing there is an option for in-person instruction if needed.

For colleges and universities, the Choice Model has significant potential as a cost-effective alternative to online instruction. This is particularly true for online courses that are unlikely to enroll large numbers of students yet need to be offered. It is inefficient to offer an online course with only 12 students while also offering an on-campus section of the same course with 20 students. This requires twice the staffing resources compared to one section of 32 students taught through the Choice Model.

In March of 2020, higher education faced one of the greatest crises it’s ever encountered, certainly in my lifetime. In the months following, institutions and faculty responded swiftly. We were called to create new ideas and implement new solutions, recognizing that higher education has likely changed forever. The Choice Model is one emerging idea that has the potential to more permanently improve course delivery long term. As we look toward a post-COVID future, the lessons of the past year should propel us forward; we do not want to regress and lose the momentum. Our students deserve nothing less.

John Drea is is an instructional assistant professor of marketing at Illinois State University. Drea retired from full-time teaching in May 2023 after a 39-year career in higher education, with 21 years spent in public higher ed administration and 18 years as a full-time faculty member in marketing and sports management. Drea is Professor Emeritus at both Western Illinois University and Illinois College. His career has been highlighted with several awards for innovation and teaching excellence.

Related Articles

We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience, including personalizing content. Learn More . By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies and revised Privacy Policy .

You may opt out or contact us anytime.

Zócalo Podcasts

Zoom Made Me a Better Teacher

When classrooms went digital, relationship building became my most essential tool to keep students engaged.

Student online learning in classroom. Courtesy of AP/Jacquelyn Martin.

by Carl Finer | November 3, 2021

The start of the new year at the middle school where I teach in South Los Angeles has been stressful; the rapid spread of the Delta variant shook us from the tenuous sense of security we were lulled into over the summer. Fans blow in the hallway, dual air filters hum in the classrooms, staff screen kids for symptoms at the gate, and everyone wears masks.

The stakes are high: the surrounding community was ravaged in earlier waves of COVID-19 as family members in service jobs or working in nearby garment factories brought the virus home to crowded, multi-generational, and multi-family households. But after a year of mostly distance learning amidst the traumas of the pandemic, the kids need to be back in the classroom, and they need us there to support them.

Yet as we return, and as we try to reinvent our school to be as physically and emotionally safe as possible, there’s a lot my colleagues and I learned during our unexpected time as a Zoom school.

Our first few months online were a struggle. My sixth and eighth graders often signed into their Zoom late or for the wrong class periods, had trouble finding the materials for their assignments, and turned off their cameras.

My email would ping with Zoom notifications from students trying to join my English class hours after it had ended. They’d leave comments in the Google Classroom stream: “Mister, where are you?” or “When are you starting class?” They’d turn in blank assignments, I’d return them, and they’d immediately turn them back in again. After requesting cameras be turned on so we could all be present together, I’d view a half dozen or more ceiling fans.

Plus, it was a challenge to build relationships with my students. There weren’t opportunities to chat at the door, to check in while they worked, to guide to the right book from my classroom library. My frustration mounted as my expectations for myself and for them weren’t being met.

By mid-October, after the first quarter had ended and with the staff temperature near boiling, our administration devoted a weekly meeting to checking in and recalibrating.  What was working and what wasn’t? What did the kids need from us now? What did we need now?

In Zoom breakout rooms, bleary and slumped low in their chairs or leaning on their knuckles, colleagues vented. They were spending more time planning than they had since they were first-year-teachers, but not seeing results. Kids were not completing assignments and not responding in our interactive lesson platforms. And we were just burned out from staring at screens.

Being asked how I felt—and being given the space to be vulnerable and honest in answering—made me feel as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

We had to let go of our hold on what things had been like before the pandemic and accept the reality of what was: We all were learning, on the fly, a different job. Our students, facing spotty internet and often difficult situations at home, were also being asked to do something they’d never done before.

As a staff, we responded by simplifying and streamlining, both in our classrooms—where we set common expectations for everything from assignment names to office hours and reduced the clutter of notifications—and our mindsets. This meant a recommitment to building relationships—one of the only tools we had to keep students engaged, and to engage with one another. We built in time during our staff trainings and meetings as well as during our classes just to check in with the community, catch up, and see how everyone was doing. Over winter break, I mailed each of my students (over 120 of them) a personalized postcard just saying hello and that I looked forward to seeing them after the holidays.

The new and improved classroom. Photo courtesy of Carl Finer.

Research supports this deliberate recalibration of our professional and student relationships.

The Search Institute , a youth development nonprofit research center, defines a “developmental” relationship as a close connection between a young person and an adult or peer that powerfully and positively shapes the young person’s identity and helps them develop a thriving mindset.

Middle school students who reported strong developmental relationships with teachers were eight times more likely to stick with challenging tasks, enjoy working hard, and know it is OK to make mistakes when learning. They also were more likely to have higher grade point averages, feel connected to school, and feel culturally respected and included.

Last spring, after examining district-level data on relationships and engagement during distance learning, our organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion committee, which I’m a member of, gathered two focus groups of our most vulnerable students—middle schoolers with disabilities and high schoolers who identify as LGBTQ+—to find out what it took to keep them engaged in online school.  The belief was that listening to these students could help us build support systems that, by addressing their needs, would also serve everyone better.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, both groups praised teachers who proactively built trusting relationships through open (often private) communication and found ways to show they cared. Surprisingly, it didn’t take much to make a difference.

Students said:

“People just need to be asked how they are doing.”

“My best teacher talks to me privately. If I’m having trouble with something, they’ll message me in the chat or pull me into a breakout room or stay after class and ask what’s going on or how they can help.”

“One time a teacher noticed I was off, that I was kind of depressed, and asked me if I was OK. I’d been going through a tough time, and it meant so much that they just asked. I was able to do my work after that.”

At the end of last year, I asked my journalism students to share their experience of living during the pandemic in a photo essay, and they responded with images capturing their frustrations with screens and boredom of quarantine as well as challenging family situations. They also took photos of the things that gave them joy and connection: new pets, escaping into nature, time with family. I asked—and in response, they shared their resilience and creativity.

Now, back with these students in-person, I’ve rebuilt my classroom environment to be more warm and welcoming, even as the environment outside the school frays. Plants and framed art line my walls along with bean-bag chairs and a couch from Target. The rows of desks have been moved into groups along with much of the learning. Each class created their own Spotify playlist, a practice I started during distance learning, and we play these during independent work. And, in my assignments, using technological tools like interactive collaboration boards, Google Forms, and our class website along with old-fashioned, desk-side conversations, I make space for students to shout out classmates, share how they are feeling, and reflect on what matters most to them.

The personal and mental health challenges we all still face as the pandemic continues are immense. But fortunately, one of the most impactful tools we have to cope with those challenges is simple.

Send A Letter To the Editors

Please tell us your thoughts. Include your name and daytime phone number, and a link to the article you’re responding to. We may edit your letter for length and clarity and publish it on our site.

(Optional) Attach an image to your letter. Jpeg, PNG or GIF accepted, 1MB maximum.

By continuing to use our website, you agree to our privacy and cookie policy . Zócalo wants to hear from you. Please take our survey !-->

Get More Zócalo

No paywall. No ads. No partisan hacks. Ideas journalism with a head and a heart.

End Meeting for All

When we remember this time, we’ll do so through a bunch of little boxes on a laptop screen. The photographer Thomas Dworzak captured our strange, sad year on Zoom.

Photographs by Thomas Dworzak / Magnum Photos

Zoom, for most of us, arrived last year. And didn’t it feel right on time? Eerily on the button. As if the nine-foot locusts that run the universe, in a spasm of insect whimsy, had given us simultaneously a deadly, denormalizing virus and a new medium of human communication in which to freak out about it.

Not a flawless medium, by any means. Zoom drained and flattened. It boxed and confined. It got stuck, freezing beloved or not-so-beloved faces into a rictus of electro-smear. Some people got headaches from all the weird shouty talking. From all the nostrilly loomings. From all the being looked at. From all the looking at yourself, because Zoom also involved you, the user, in a kind of reptile staredown with your own Zoom image. (Only once I’d discovered the “Hide Self-View” feature, a month or so into the pandemic, could I settle down on Zoom.)

But there was poetry in it, too. In the world that we had abruptly entered, Zoom was the poorly lit liminal space—between home and work, between contact and estrangement, between you and not-you. And it helped, no question. Broadcasting from our little Zoom hutches, from our strange dioramas of domesticity, we beat back the infestation of isolation. Business got done. We stayed in touch.

I like the Zoom moments captured here, by the photographer Thomas Dworzak. In their humble aesthetics they seem to confess the inadequacy of the image: the impossibility, the inappropriateness, of an iconic Robert Capa –style shot that crystallizes the pandemic for us. But each one is part of a single, global story: the story of how we managed. And failed to manage. Some of the faces are engaged, alert, present, fully into their Zooming; others are puffy with blankness, not in the mood at all. There are weddings, birthdays, physiotherapy sessions, ballet classes, court dates (the stare of a judge on Zoom is especially august), bursts of activism and testimony. The images are not autonomous. Even the most fabulously random tableau—say, the shirtless man with no eyebrows, hefting in each hand what looks like a condom filled with water—exists within, and depends upon, the blurry continuum of Zoom.

Have we been changed by all this? Have we been changed by Zoom? “The suburban office park is dead,” I was told authoritatively the other evening by a man who seemed to know what he was talking about. Work habits have shifted. So that might be something. Otherwise, look around—we’re grinding slowly and sulfurously backwards into the regular. Flights are full, traffic is stacking up, the wheels of commerce are turning. Humans, we have missed. But maybe not the planetary weight of humanity. In Dworzak’s collage of images, we see that weight being mysteriously, messily, awkwardly, and somewhat beautifully sublimated. We see it being thrown, for a moment, onto a new plane.

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essays Samples >
• Essay Types >
• College Essay Example

Zoom College Essays Samples For Students

14 samples of this type

Regardless of how high you rate your writing skills, it's always a worthy idea to check out an expertly written College Essay example, especially when you're dealing with a sophisticated Zoom topic. This is precisely the case when WowEssays.com collection of sample College Essays on Zoom will come in useful. Whether you need to come up with an original and meaningful Zoom College Essay topic or survey the paper's structure or formatting peculiarities, our samples will provide you with the necessary data.

Another activity area of our write my paper company is providing practical writing assistance to students working on Zoom College Essays. Research help, editing, proofreading, formatting, plagiarism check, or even crafting completely unique model Zoom papers upon your demand – we can do that all! Place an order and buy a research paper now.

Topography Essay

Open drainage.kmz

1. After reviewing the chapter on Fluvial Processes, open the Drainage patterns placemark and zoom to the first placemark.

What type of drainage pattern is this? Underground drainage and Dendriric drainage pattern

What is the name of the mountain you are looking at? Mount. Shasta - Sacred Mountains Next To Pluto cave

2. Zoom to placemark 2. What type of drainage pattern is this? Dendriric drainage pattern

What is the name of the mountain range that is causing this type of drainage? Sacramento mountains

Example of Essay on Concepts of Art and Architecture

Free using language of the moving image to convey an idea/theme essay: top-quality sample to follow, introduction.

Don't waste your time searching for a sample.

Get your essay done by professional writers!

Just from $10/page

Free Essay On Digital Photography

Excellent basketball program: covid-19 program adaptation essays examples, part 1: in-person, free essay on usefulness of prezi.

Analysis by Comparison and Contrast

Appropriate software is important in a presentation as the choice can determine whether or not the dissemination will be successful. In my presentation of the equipment upgrade, I choose to use Prezi over PowerPoint. In this write-up I explain my rationale to this effect.

Free Essay On Learn How To Use A Digital Camera

Expertly crafted essay on la jetée, managerial accounting olympus optical company, ltd. (a): cost management for short life-cycle products essay samples, back to 2004 essays examples, example of original design essay, is samsung a better choice than apple, theater studies: writing, directing, and acting essay examples, evaluation of iphone 5s essay examples, example of essay on thankful to be a digital native.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

A Neuropsychological Exploration of Zoom Fatigue

What is Zoom fatigue and is there a biopsychosocial explanation for this COVID-inspired phenomenon? The answer might surprise—and comfort—you.

Zoom fatigue” describes the tiredness, worry, or burnout associated with overusing virtual platforms of communication. 1 Like other experiences associated with the coronavirus ( COVID-19 ) pandemic, Zoom fatigue is widely prevalent, intense, and completely new.

In an effort to understand this new fatigue that may tax the more than 300 million daily participants of Zoom 2,3 , experts representing diverse disciplines including acoustics, business, and the social sciences have contributed their explanations. For instance, audio has been proposed as the main reason that video meetings are draining. It turns out that millisecond delays in virtual verbal responses negatively affect our interpersonal perceptions, even without any internet or technical issues. 4,5

Other explanations attribute the fatigue to an underlying predisposition painted by the pandemic backdrop, such as increased financial stress and unemployment. Cognitive factors are also likely to contribute to fatigue, as an increased ability to virtually multitask threatens our attentional capacity. Exploring such multifactorial etiologies has delved us into a deeper understanding of the fragile intricacies that make up the precious in-person social interactions we had before COVID-19.

What is the psychological explanation of Zoom fatigue? Wecan start the exploration by revisiting the process of mental fatigue. A core psychological component of fatigue is a rewards-costs tradeoff that happens in our minds unconsciously. 6 Basically, at every level of behavior, a tradeoff is made between the likely rewards versus costs of engaging in a certain activity. 7 Even minor decisions, such as pressing the “Delete” versus “Backspace” button to erase a typed word, are made on the basis of these unconscious estimates to maximize reward (eg, time) over cost (eg, effort). 8 The link between this reward assessment and fatigue then comes here: activation of the dopaminergic pathways in brain structures associated with reward (eg, ventral striatum, anterior cingulate cortex [ACC], amygdala) increases subjective alertness, energy, and motivation 9,10 —the opposite of fatigue.

Is a lack of perceived reward relative to cost during videoconferencing a primary psychological mechanism of Zoom fatigue? Indeed, social interactions are very much associated with our reward circuits, as oxytocin—the hormone involved in social bonding—modulates these same dopaminergic pathways involved in reward processing. 11 Moreover, how that social interaction happens seems to matter. For instance, functional MRI data reveal that live face-to-face interactions, compared to viewing recordings, are associated with greater activation in the same brain regions involved in reward (ie, ACC, ventral striatum, amygdala). 12 So, more active social connection is associated with more perceived reward, which in turn affects the very neurological pathways modulating alertness versus fatigue.

This neuropathophysiology may explain Zoom fatigue. For example, if the audio delays inherent intechnology are associated with more negative perceptions and distrust between people 4,5 , there is likely decreased reward perceived when those people are videoconferencing. Another example is direct mutual gaze. There is robust evidence on how eye contact improves connection—faster responses 13 , more memorization of faces 14 , and increased likeability and attractiveness. 15 These tools that make interactions organically rewarding are compromised over video. On video, gaze must be directed at the camera to appear like making eye contact with an observer, and during conferences with 3 or more people, it can be impossible to distinguish mutual gaze between any 2 people.

Not only are rewards lessened via these social disconnections during videoconferencing, but there are also elevated costs in the form of cognitive effort. Much of communication is actually unconscious and nonverbal, as emotional content is rapidly processed through social cues like touch, joint attention, and body posture. 16 These nonverbal cues are not only used to acquire information about others, but are also directly used to prepare an adaptive response and engage in reciprocal communication, all in a matter of milliseconds. 17 However, on video, most of these cues are difficult to visualize, since the same environment is not shared (limiting joint attention) and both subtle facial expressions and full bodily gestures may not be captured. Without the help of these unconscious cues on which we have relied since infancy to socioemotionally assess each other and bond, compensatory cognitive and emotional effort is required. In addition, this increased cost competes for people’s attention with acutely elevated distractions such as multitasking, the home environment (eg, family, lack of privacy), and their mirror image on the screen. Simply put, videoconferences can be associated with low reward and high cost.

Further yet, there are undoubtedly many other factors contributing to Zoom fatigue. The biopsychosocial model commits our field of psychiatry to holistically consider all the hidden influences that make up our experiences. Biologically, videoconferencing is confounded by a more sedentary daily rhythm experienced during the pandemic. Notably, physical activity is associated with about a 40% reduced risk of fatigue. 18 Psychologically, a filtering of our stimuli through a fundamental rewards-costs analysis may explain how our dopaminergic pathways contribute. Socially, a perfect storm of vast unemployment, school shutdowns, racial injustices, political divisions, physical distancing, and loneliness predisposes everyone in our nation vulnerably.

The purpose of the biopsychosocial formulation, however, is to guide the treatment plan. Although the factors contributing to Zoom fatigue are complicated and multidimensional, a closer examination can lead to hope. The contributing factors, depending on their adjustability, serve as potential therapeutic targets to alleviate fatigue and salvage the aspects of social interaction that were once unconscious and taken for granted. Exploring alternative and more explicit ways to improve perceived reward psychologically during virtual communication may be a therapeutic approach for not only Zoom fatigue, but the mental and physical toll that come with it.

Dr Lee is Assistant Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California at Los Angeles and the Directorof the Pediatric Consult-Liaison Service and Pediatric Emergency Psychiatry at UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital. She has nothing to disclose regarding this article.

This article was originally posted on June 27, 2020, under the title "A Psychological Exploration of Zoom Fatigue," and has since been updated. -Ed

1. Wolf CR. Virtual platforms are helpful tools but can add to our stress. Psychology Today. May 14, 2020. Accessed October 19, 2020. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-desk-the-mental-health-lawyer/202005/virtual-platforms-are-helpful-tools-can-add-our-stress

2. Patnaik S, Malara N, Mukherjee S. Zoom says it has 300 million daily meeting participants, not users. Reuters. April 30, 2020. Accessed October 19, 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zoom-video-commn-encryption/zoom-says-it-has-300-million-daily-meeting-participants-not-users-idUSKBN22C1T4

3. Zoom Company News. 90-Day Security Plan Progress Report: April 22. Accessed October 19, 2020. https://blog.zoom.us/90-day-security-plan-progress-report-april-22/

4. Roberts F, Francis AL. Identifying a temporal threshold of tolerance for silent gaps after requests.  J Acoust Soc Am. 2013;133(6):EL471-EL477.

5. Johnson. Why zoom meetings are so dissatisfying. The Economist. May 16, 2020. Accessed October 19, 2020. https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2020/05/16/why-zoom-meetings-are-so-dissatisfying ​

6. Boksem MA, Tops M. Mental fatigue: costs and benefits. Brain Research Reviews. 2008; 59:125-139.

7. van der Linden, D. The urge to stop: The cognitive and biological nature of acute mental fatigue. In: Ackerman PL, ed. Decade of Behavior/Science Conference. Cognitive fatigue: Multidisciplinary perspectives on current research and future applications. American Psychological Association; 2011: 149-164.

8. Dix A, Finlay J, Abowd G, Beale R. Human-computer interaction. Prentice Hall; 1993.

9. Lorist MM, Tops M. Caffeine, fatigue, and cognition. Brain and Cognition. 2003; 53:82-94.

10. Lorist MM, Boksem MAS, Ridderinkhof KR. Impaired cognitive control and reduced cingulate activity during mental fatigue. Cognitive Brain Research. 2005;24:199-205.

11. Donaldson ZR, Young LJ. Oxytocin, vasopressin, and the neurogenetics of sociality. Science . 2008;322:900-903.

12. Redcay E, Dodell-Feder D, Pearrow MJ, et al. Live face-to-face interaction during fMRI: A new tool for social cognitive neuroscience. Neuroimage . 2010;50:1639-1647.

13. von Grunau M, Anston C. The detection of gaze direction: a stare-in-the-crowd effect . Perception. 1995;24(11):1297-1313.

14. Mason MF, Hood BM, Macrae CN. Look into my eyes: gaze direction and person memory. Memory. 2004;12:637-643.

15. Nurmsoo E, Einav S, Hood BM. Best friends: children use mutual gaze to identify friendships in others. Dev Sci. 2012;15(3):417-425.

16. Conty L, Dezecache G, et al. Early binding of gaze, gesture, and emotion: neural time course and correlates. J Neurosci. 2012;32(13):4531-4539.

17. Schilbach L. Eye to eye, face to face and brain to brain: novel approaches to study the behavioral dynamics and neural mechanisms of social interactions. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 2015;3:130-135.

18. Puetz TW. Physical activity and feeling of energy and fatigue. Sports Med. 2006;36:767-780. ❒

Positive Computing and Designing for Mental Health

Join the Conversation: Introducing “Chatbot Corner”

Apps for Mental Health Care: Benchmarks of Effectiveness

First FDA-Approved Self-Neuromodulation Device for PTSD Officially Launches in the US

The Year in Cover Stories 2023

2 Commerce Drive Cranbury, NJ 08512

609-716-7777

• Toggle navigation

xx Monroe Street xx

Zoom Summaries

Zoom Summary Guidelines

If you miss a Zoom meeting, please write a 250-300 word summary, including at least one paragraph, one direct quotation from the conversation, and as many bulleted points as you like.

You are encouraged to make your summary interactive, responsive, and —NOT simply informative.  What did you learn from watching & listening to the recording?  What would you have said or asked if you’d been present at the meeting?  Would you have used Zoom emoji reactions to any particular moment in the Zoom?  Would you have used the Chatbar?  Would have wanted to do a Screenshare—and, if so, what would you have shared?

These are just a few questions to get you going with the creative part of the summary—don’t feel obligated to respond to all of them or in order…  Basically, I just want your summary to indicate what you learned from the Zoom (the important stuff related to the course) and also how you responded to it, the ideas it gave you, etc.

Note: When posting, please title your post using your name and the meeting # (i.e., Monroe Street Zoom Mtg 1 Summary) and remember to check the box next to the “Zoom Category” before posting.

You can test that you posted correctly by clicking this link; if you can’t see your post there, then go here, scroll down and look for post (you can search for your name as well), and click “Edit” then make sure you’ve selected the right category.  Rinse and repeat.

3 thoughts on “Zoom Summaries”

Alexandria Dorato Monroe Street Zoom Mtg 1 Summary

After watching the zoom recording, I felt more comfortable with starting college. When I registered for classes, I was nervous about remote learning and how it would work out for me. I am glad that you went over everything, I have a clear understanding of how this course will be for me. I learned how to use open lab by simply following the steps that you provided. If I was able to attend the zoom meeting, I would have asked how to view my grades. After watching the video “Love is the Message, the Message to death” by Arthur Jafa, I understood your feelings towards the video. The message is just so powerful. A quote that stood out to me was “when in need, who will save you”. This quote makes me wonder and also feel upset for the people who feel that they are alone in this world. I also learned what is expected from you in terms of the media shares after reading your response to the video. I get a better understanding after seeing examples because it enables me to know that I am doing the task correctly. I developed a few questions after you discussed the reading “A Word’s Meaning Can Often Depend on Who Says It” by Gloria Naylor. I would have asked why the word could never be applied to a woman as she stated. Naylor gave her reasoning but it is still unclear to me.

Question: For the essay draft, do you want more of a bulleted format or write it as if we were writing the final copy? Do you want us to just revise the draft?

Also.. I am going to try to join the zoom meetings on my lunch break. I don’t think i can attend the entire meeting but i will be there whenever i get the chance to.

Unfortunately I was unable to join the zoom meeting but after watching it I understand how this course will be. in this meeting , I clearly understand the syllabus and the work we have to do in this term. This is my freshman year and I didn’t use open lab in high school but after watching the video I learned how to use this.We have to do media share where we have to share link/ image or video that says something about who we are or where we are. There was an essay “A Word’s meaning can often depend on who says it”. It was interesting because she started essay saying that words don’t mean anything and later she was talking about particular word that has different meanings. She showed that words meaning can be changed over time or by some reasons. I found this interesting. The way you explain the text was amazing and I can’t wait to come in next session.

(I have no questions for now because some of questions I had and other students asked that. So I got answer)

Maram Awadh Zoom Mtg 1 Summary

Before watching the zoom recording, I was overwhelmed and lost due to the fact that I didn’t receive any information or emails about this class and was basically in the dark. After viewing this recording, I now understand a bit of what to do and what this class consists of. I learned a few things about OpenLab and how to use it for this class, I was very confused at first when I logged in but now I’m getting the hang of it. If I was in the zoom call I would have asked about the assignment that was due and where to upload it and I would have asked how to view my grades, also I would have totally used zoom emoji. I never knew we could do that, so that’s another thing I discovered. One thing I found really interesting and what stuck on my mind during the reading was when you said “Words themselves have no power in of themselves without the power that people as a community assign to them.” I found this very interesting because nowadays people use these racial slurs to degrade people, specifically people of color and they use these disgusting words to make themselves feel “higher” and more “superior” to them. They give these words a lot of power and use them against a specific type of person or group. Personally, I found the reading very interesting and I enjoyed the meaning behind it. I also enjoyed the conversations you had with the students and I hope I get to make it to your next zoom call.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

The OpenLab at City Tech: A place to learn, work, and share

The OpenLab is an open-source, digital platform designed to support teaching and learning at City Tech (New York City College of Technology), and to promote student and faculty engagement in the intellectual and social life of the college community.

New York City College of Technology | City University of New York

Accessibility

Our goal is to make the OpenLab accessible for all users.

Learn more about accessibility on the OpenLab

Creative Commons

• - Attribution
• - NonCommercial
• - ShareAlike

© New York City College of Technology | City University of New York

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to footer

Enchanting Marketing

Writing advice for small business

How to Explain Your Ideas Clearly: The Zoom-In-Zoom-Out Technique

by Henneke | 86 enchanting opinions, add yours? :)

Do readers jump up to implement your advice?

Let’s be honest, writing a good explanation is tougher than it seems.

Explanations often turn out to be dry and uninspiring. We fail to engage our readers, and that’s when we fail to communicate our ideas, too.

So, what can you do to explain with clarity and zing?

The Zoom-In-Zoom-Out technique

You know it from photography, don’t you?

Zoom out, and you display the big picture. Zoom in, and you show details.

Writing works the same.

The best writing combines satellite-style zooming out with telephoto-like zooming in.

When zooming in, you see the mother lion licking her young; you see the bee gathering honey from a clover; you see the withering petals of a tulip. You see one specific situation—one flower, one person or one animal doing one specific thing.

Satellite photography is the complete opposite. Instead of tiny details, you see patterns. You see the colorful fields with millions of tulips in the Netherlands. You see how the green countryside has turned brown after weeks of heatwave. You see sprawling suburbs surrounding the skyscrapers in downtown Houston.

In photography, you have all sorts of lenses and you create pictures with different levels of zoom. But in writing, you alternate mostly between the extremes:

• Captivate readers by using the telephoto lens—tell the story of one person in one specific situation
• Describe the satellite image to explain the wider picture, the trends, the lessons, the statistics
• As much as possible, skip the half-zoomed scenes

The Zoom-In-Zoom-Out technique helps you explain anything to anyone; it helps you captivate readers, even with the most boring topics.

Shall I show you?

How the masters of explanation use this technique

Chip and Dan Heath apply the Zoom-In-Zoom-Out technique in all their books to educate business readers.

Below follows an example from their book The Power of Moments . The story shows how important praise is, and it starts when a student, called Sloop, has been told to mouth words because her voice doesn’t blend with the rest of the choir. Then another teacher asks her to stay after practice:

Sloop was hesitant at first but eventually lowered her guard. She said, “We sang scale after scale, song after song, harmonizing and improving, until we were hoarse.” Then the teacher took Sloop’s face in her hands and looked her in the eyes and said: “You have a distinctive, expressive, and beautiful voice. You could have been the love child of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.” As she left the room that day, she felt as if she’d shed a ton of weight. “I was on top of the world,” she said. Then she went to the library to find out who Joan Baez was.

Sensory details —the singing of scale after scale and becoming hoarse; and how the teacher took her face in her hands—make this scene come alive. The authors have truly zoomed in. As readers, we can picture the scene.

And once a story has captured readers, the authors zoom out to share the big picture:

The importance of recognition to employees is inarguable. But here’s the problem: While recognition is a universal expectation, it’s not a universal practice. (…) “More than 80 per cent of supervisors claim they frequently express appreciation to their subordinates, while less than 20 per cent of the employees report that their supervisors express appreciation more than occasionally.” Call it the recognition gap.

Zoomed-out statements—facts, figures, trends and big pictures—only become powerful because we’ve read the zoomed-in stories first.

Facts give stories substance. Stories give facts meaning. Substance and meaning are two of the most powerful factors in any explanation. ~ Lee LeFever (From: The Art of Explanation)

Another example of the Zoom-In-Zoom-Out technique

The Year of Magical Thinking is a memoir by Joan Didion, in which she describes her journey of grieving for her husband.

But she doesn’t tell only her own story, she also comments on theories around loss and grieving. For instance:

From Bereavement: Reactions, Consequences, and Care, compiled in 1984 by the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, I learned for example that the most frequent immediate responses to death were shock, numbness, and a sense of disbelief: “Subjectively, survivors may feel like they are wrapped in a cocoon or blanket; to others, they may look as though they are holding up well. Because the reality of death has not yet penetrated awareness, survivors can appear to be quite accepting of the loss.”

The statement above about bereavement is abstract, and Didion paints a clear picture with the details of her own grieving process:

I could not give away the rest of his shoes. I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return.

As a blogger, sharing your personal experiences helps you bond with your readers. It turns you into a real human being rather than an abstract writer.

Sharing miniature stories makes your writing more human, more authentic. And when you connect the stories to the wider picture, you establish your authority, too.

A powerful mix of authority and authenticity.

Example 3 of the Zoom-In-Zoom-Out technique

In a blog post about finding your passion , Mark Manson explains his general view:

Today, I received approximately the 11,504th email this year from a person telling me that they don’t know what to do with their life. (…) The common complaint among a lot of these people is that they need to “find their passion.” I call bullshit. You already found your passion, you’re just ignoring it. Seriously, you’re awake 16 hours a day, what the fuck do you do with your time?

To be honest, as I was reading that, I didn’t quite get it. What does Manson really mean? Why would people ignore their passion?

But then he zooms in to a specific story of a friend, and I understand:

I have a friend who, for the last three years, has been trying to build an online business selling whatever. It hasn’t been working. And by not working, I mean he’s not even launching anything. Despite years of “work” and saying he’s going to do this or that, nothing actually ever gets done. What does get done is when one of his former co-workers comes to him with a design job to create a logo or design some promotional material for an event. Holy shit, he’s all over that like flies on fresh cow shit. And he does a great job! He stays up to 4:00 AM losing himself working on it and loving every second of it. But then two days later it’s back to, “Man, I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” I meet so many people like him. He doesn’t need to find his passion. His passion already found him. He’s just ignoring it. He just refuses to believe it’s viable. He is just afraid of giving it an honest-to-god try.

Readers respond to stories because they give meaning to abstract advice.

So, whenever you want to share a lesson or explain a trend, share a specific story and use vivid details to captivate and inspire readers.

How to explain better

You can use this Aoom-In-Zoom-Out technique for any type of writing:

• In a case study, explain the key benefits of your service by relating how it worked for one specific client
• In a blog post, teach a lesson by giving a specific example
• In journalism, weave sociological trends with the stories of how it affects specific families
• In a memoir, tell your personal story and relate it to a bigger lesson
• In a historical novel, tell the story of your protagonist to open a doorway to a historical era

The foundation of explanatory writing is simple: Zoom in. Zoom out.

PS Thank you to Amy Peacock for inspiring this blog post.

Books mentioned in this post:

Further reading on good explanations:

How vivid language makes your message memorable 5 ways to simplify complex ideas A brilliant example of explanatory writing: A story on whales

You may also like:

Enjoyed this get my fortnightly newsletter in your inbox > > >, get my best writing tips in your inbox ....

Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

Reader Interactions

Leave a comment and join the conversation cancel reply.

June 20, 2023 at 11:04 pm

Once again, your enchanting words create inspiration. Henneke, Thank you,

June 21, 2023 at 9:17 am

I’m glad you enjoyed this, Helene. Happy storytelling!

May 26, 2023 at 3:27 pm

Just a quick thank you for all your outstanding teaching. You are such a talent! Trying to find the time to take one of your courses.

May 26, 2023 at 5:06 pm

Thank you for your lovely compliment, Pamela. 🙂

January 4, 2023 at 12:39 am

would I be able to do two zoom-ins in one essay like have my first primary source be the intro-zoom? but then zoom in on another primary later on in the essay

January 4, 2023 at 9:50 am

Yes, you can zoom in more often.

March 14, 2024 at 1:42 pm

Well 😅🔥 will work on it

March 14, 2024 at 1:50 pm

Hope you’ll have fun with this!

August 11, 2022 at 7:15 pm

Exhilarating. The way you have stressed metaphor to zoom in and out and the points below “You can use this technique for any type of writing:” is very engaging.

Kudos for those ideas.

August 11, 2022 at 9:20 pm

Thank you, Indranil. Happy writing!

January 11, 2021 at 12:21 pm

Great advice! I can’t wait to use it. I’m like the thousands of other writers who like Henneke’s articles.

January 11, 2021 at 2:07 pm

Thank you, Wally. This is one of my favorite posts 🙂

December 8, 2020 at 3:49 pm

First off, great explanation of the technique. I’m trying to practice my writing and was wondering if you have any additional examples for the zoom in and out technique, other than the ones given in the article? Thank you!

December 8, 2020 at 6:26 pm

You’ll find many more examples in any of the books by Chip and Dan Heath, or check out good-quality long-form journalism, and see where they share stats or trends, and when they share stories about specific people in specific situations.

November 5, 2020 at 7:49 pm

BEST explanation of this technique!

November 6, 2020 at 10:59 am

Thank you, Jan. Happy writing!

June 7, 2020 at 3:15 pm

Wow! This technique just blew my mind. It is simple as it sounds, but so powerful to improve my writing skill. Thanks for sharing!!!!!

June 7, 2020 at 4:31 pm

I’m glad you enjoyed it, Nhan. Happy writing!

July 18, 2019 at 5:59 pm

It finally makes sense. Zoom in and zoom out. For sure personal experience helps with writing because it’s emotional.Thanks am ready to try it

July 19, 2019 at 10:45 am

I’m glad this post makes sense 🙂 Happy writing, Lubosi, and thank you for stopping by. .

April 2, 2019 at 4:09 pm

Your tips are on point, simple and relevant.

I’m been struggling with extracting the ideas from my head and put them in writing. They are like bees,buzzing in and out,but poorly materialize into actual words on paper.

Any words of advice?

Your articles are great. Thanks for sharing!

April 2, 2019 at 4:50 pm

It’s very common that ideas are buzzing around our minds, but somehow when we try to commit them to paper, it’s not working. It takes time to untangle our thoughts. You may find this blog post useful: https://www.enchantingmarketing.com/writing-strategies/

October 9, 2018 at 12:15 pm

This is a good technique. Very helpful.

October 9, 2018 at 12:16 pm

Happy zooming in and out! 😉

September 7, 2018 at 10:45 am

Hello, The world of better writing sketched by you is a vast one to travel to a beginner like me. But the world is enticing and enchanting and inspires one to traverse.

September 7, 2018 at 4:27 pm

Thank you for your compliment. 🙂 Happy writing!

August 25, 2018 at 5:24 am

More insightful ideas to share with my writing group and our followers on facebook. Thank you.

August 26, 2018 at 6:08 pm

Thank you for sharing, Susan. I appreciate it 🙂

August 18, 2018 at 6:15 pm

Thank you again for writing this Henneke. Its a gem! I felt like I was crouched down panning in a cool stream for weeks and finally found a nugget of gold. 🙂

August 18, 2018 at 6:54 pm

What a great metaphor! 🙂

August 9, 2018 at 9:45 pm

All good points for blogs and journalism, and I rate Lee LeFever’s book highly too.

In my niche, technical writing, there’s a need for minimalism and non-emotive content. But you can still use stories – weave them into examples to give the reader more context.

August 10, 2018 at 3:41 pm

I agree – there’s still space for using mini-stories as examples. Even in technical writing, describing specific situations can be useful. As you suggest, minimalism doesn’t need to exclude zooming in, and zooming in doesn’t mean a scene has to be emotional; it can be a specific user case, too.

Thank you for stopping by to add your thoughts, Craig.

August 9, 2018 at 11:53 am

Hi Henneke – Thank you so much for recommending Lee LeFever’s The Art of Explanation. I bought it, spent the last two days reading it and was not disappointed. Lee’s concepts for creating clear explanations are outstanding. Framing the audience or reader on the “explanation scale” before putting pen to paper fixes the need to think about relevant context before hitting the details. Although it deals more with video instruction than writing a book, I recommend this book to anyone writing a how-to book. Wish I had it years ago.

I also bought the Heath brothers’ Power of Moments and I find it complements LeFever’s book in how to express human experiences meaningfully.

Thanks again Henneke for your insight into writers’ needs – from sunny Sydney. But we now need rain.

August 9, 2018 at 9:00 pm

Hi Paul – I’m so glad you enjoyed The Art of Explanation. Like you say, it’s written for making videos, but equally applies to writing. There’s so much similarity between making educational videos and writing (and public speaking, too).

We had some welcome rain yesterday!

August 9, 2018 at 12:44 am

The title of this writing style – Zoom-in/Zoom-out – makes this lesson so much easier to remember. I love your bee graphic. A picture speaks a thousand words, and while your images are inspirational, your words would be just as complete without them!

I love your blog – and thanks for this lesson!

August 9, 2018 at 8:57 pm

Wow, what a lovely compliment. Thank you, Brylee 🙂 Happy writing, and happy zooming! 🙂

August 8, 2018 at 5:41 pm

Thank you, Henneke. Your advice are very useful for blogging and for posting in social network.

I will follow you advice to get my writing better. And… to study how some (bad) Italian politicians can engage readers with their racist messages… 😉

August 8, 2018 at 8:00 pm

I’ve found that there’s a lot to learn from how politicians communicate and connect with people’s emotions—even if they use their communication techniques for purposes we disagree with. But I don’t really enjoy studying their words—I rather read something that pleases me than something that upsets me. 😉

August 8, 2018 at 5:14 pm

Hi Henneke, Love this and so many of your posts! I can’t add anything brilliant but – yes – what they said!! You SO rock this writing thing. Thank you.

August 8, 2018 at 7:57 pm

Thank you for your lovely compliment, Cecelia. You put a smile on my face 🙂

Happy writing!

August 8, 2018 at 3:23 pm

Hello Henneke, It is absolutely an engaging and informative blog to learn the essential elements in terms of style and effectiveness to engage the reader’s attention particular to the circumstances. One thing that I want to know from you is: how to write a good “case study?” REGARDS,

Richard Padgett and Jonathan Tee have both written good blog posts about writing case studies ( here and here ).

August 8, 2018 at 12:51 pm

“Once upon a time I discovered a talented woman from the Netherlands writing and living in the UK. She riveted my attention with logical and engaging writing ideas. She also made it her mantra to reply quickly and personally to my comments. I thought then and there, I wanted to be a part of her community and to adopt her ideas for my new following. “Zoom out with me for ‘the rest of the story’, I double dare you. Thanks, Henneke, you rock.

August 8, 2018 at 7:55 pm

Hey Stephen, how lovely to see your name pop up again.

Thank you for your lovely compliment and for your story … I’m glad the story is still continuing. Right? I’m happy to have you as part of my community. Thank you.

August 8, 2018 at 12:30 pm

Hi, Henneke… I read all your posts I receive, but I do not make any comment, or reply on them. Because I still have fear to write something in English….! I fear about sentence structure, choosing right words etc. I assume, my expression will not be much worthy to anyone, even to you. But I have a deep desire to write blogs. By reading your posts, I feel, I am a bit inspired to write. The above term Zoom in and Zoom out is very interesting, very important for me to use in my writing. I’ll try to start writing now and use this term in it… Thank you for inspiring me as mentor through your posts.

August 8, 2018 at 7:50 pm

Thank you for overcoming your resistance to writing a comment in English. I much appreciate it! 🙂

August 8, 2018 at 11:04 am

If a day someone asks me “How did you learn to write so well and vividly?” ever comes, your name will be the first to roll off my tongue. 🙂 

August 8, 2018 at 6:36 pm

Thank you so much, Maya. I appreciate your generous compliment 🙂

August 8, 2018 at 10:06 am

Awesome. This is so well explained. Thank you Henneke.

I have a desire to start writing and is learning up the techniques. Have to start writing as practice makes perfect.

Thank you, Christina, for your lovely compliment. Be careful that you don’t aim for perfection, and enjoy your writing!

August 8, 2018 at 8:29 am

Dear Henneke, I visit your blog only now and then, but follow you on Twitter regularly. Coming here (and reading the comments in addition to the article) is like stopping at a warm, friendly coffee house where all is safe and where reigns kindness and good will. Thank you for instilling this ambiance. Enjoy the rest of the Summer up in the lovely North of England.

August 8, 2018 at 6:35 pm

What a lovely compliment, Doris. Thank you. It’s exactly how I’d like my blog to be, and I appreciate everyone stopping by to ask questions, share their opinions, and provide encouragement. I’m enjoying the good company here!

August 7, 2018 at 11:24 pm

I can understand how the woman mentioned in your email left a bit confused. Even in your post here the examples are a bit opaque.

Your examples are clear, but don’t give a direct relation to each other. Even the bereavement examples don’t show a continuance of the story between the two paragraphs — as in, the second paragraph obviously didn’t come immediately after the first. There is more in between that apparently is a transition between the zooming.

I’m probably just a knuckle-headed noob. You said that the in-between transitions should be left out, but reading the bereavement paragraphs one after the other it’s obvious that more of the story has been edited out.

Please enlighten those of us that are still wandering in the dark.

August 8, 2018 at 6:33 pm

Hi Randy —

I’m sorry if my guidance and explanations weren’t clear enough. It’s always the fault of the teacher!

You do need transitions to move from the one to the other so the relations between paragraphs are are clear. But you want to avoid the half-zoomed scenes as much as possible. Most writers don’t zoom in enough, so the writing feels too abstract. It lacks vividness.

The examples are quoted are snippets from the books, that I felt best demonstrated the zoomed in and zoomed out paragraphs, but they’re text in between. It’s tricky to start quoting whole pages of books in short blog posts. I would highly recommend reading the book “The Power of Moments” as it’s one of the best examples for the zoom in zoom out technique I’ve come across. When you read it pay attention to the vivid stories Chip and Dan Heath share. You can also see how they then move on to explain the big picture—the trends, the research and the lessons they suggest.

Also, for people who read your comment and haven’t seen the email … The writer I mentioned was confused after attending a paid writing workshop (which was not by me). My explanation helped her apply the zoom in zoom out technique — and this post expanded from my explanation to her.

August 7, 2018 at 8:09 pm

Excellent advice Henneke.

August 7, 2018 at 8:35 pm

Thank you, David

August 7, 2018 at 5:39 pm

This is centainly the best piece of advice one may need to improve writing. Thank you so much. I share Shirley Pordominsky’s suggestion. You should publish books with your terrific ideas. Wish you the best.

August 7, 2018 at 7:21 pm

Thank you, Tarcisio. I appreciate your vote for Shirley’s suggestion to publish a collection of my blog posts as books. I’ll look into it soon. 🙂

August 7, 2018 at 3:59 pm

Thank you for sharing this. Here is what I gleaned from this post in my own words:

My readers definitely want to know if the ideas that I’m sharing have impacted me personally. They want to know whether I have gone through similar experiences or similar situations as theirs. They want to know how I got myself out. They want working solutions not just abstract ideas. They want to know I’m human. By relating my experience and offering solutions intermittently within my story I will be able to capture their attention and win their hearts and probably make a sale.

August 7, 2018 at 7:19 pm

Yep, that’s a good summary. It may not always possible to share a personal experience, so it’s also okay to share a story about a client or a story you’ve read somewhere—as long as sometimes you do share a personal experience.

Happy writing, Martin. Thank you for your comment. 🙂

August 7, 2018 at 3:19 pm

Thank you so much! Within seconds of digesting this zoom in-zoom out approach, I was able to write an opening line to ‘sell’ a new family centered event. Five minutes later, I had a jingle-like poem to set the mood for the activity. I focused in on the action steps a single kid would complete while participating and presto! things just fell into place. Taking the why it’s important, educational stuff out of the picture–at first–was the solution. Thank you, Henneke!

August 7, 2018 at 7:17 pm

Wow, that makes me happy, Jeannette. Isn’t it lovely when things just fall into place?

Thank you so much for sharing 🙂

August 7, 2018 at 2:24 pm

Hi Henneke, its time for you to sell the collection of your articles, by theme or the kind of writing advise. you decide. Volume One and Two are already ready – and at the end of each year one more book. I can see translations in many languages. I’m always learning from you. Thank you

August 7, 2018 at 7:16 pm

Good idea! Someone mentioned that same idea a few years ago, but I couldn’t get my head around it at that time. Maybe now the time is right as it’s easier to collect a series of blog posts around different themes. I’ll look into it.

Thank you, Shirley.

August 26, 2018 at 7:44 pm

I also vote with my hands and feet for such collections. I’ve already opened my wallet to buy several such books 🙂

This technique is priceless! As it turned out, I intuitively used the Zoom-In-Zoom-Out in my articles.

August 28, 2018 at 7:22 pm

Thank you for another vote, Michael! I need to get some other stuff of my plate first, and then I’ll look into getting this organized 🙂

August 7, 2018 at 2:09 pm

Excellent use of examples to illustrate the zoom in zoom out concept. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Dave

August 7, 2018 at 7:15 pm

Thank you, David. I’m glad you like the examples, too.

This technique is amazing and your explanation and examples are clear and eloquent. Your blog is a treasure trove. Zoom in. Zoom out. 🙂 Thank you!

August 7, 2018 at 7:14 pm

I love it when I find good examples to illustrate the point I want to make in a blog post. The quality of the examples can make or break a blog post.

Thank you for your comment, Nata. Happy writing!

August 7, 2018 at 1:54 pm

Thank you for your posts Henneke, I am now an avid follower. The thing about your writings is that it gears one to make a conscious effort to make writing beautiful, not to leave it to chance or to experiments upon experiments.

The things we know, sit at the back of our minds, but you bring them to fore and guide us in using those tools effectively. Thank you.

August 7, 2018 at 7:12 pm

Thank you for your lovely comment, Boladale. I appreciate it. Happy writing!

August 7, 2018 at 1:31 pm

So very helpful – thank you!

August 7, 2018 at 7:11 pm

My pleasure, Lisa. Happy writing!

August 7, 2018 at 1:13 pm

?? Zoom in, zoom out is such a masterful metaphor for this, Henneke! Once I’d read the article, I realised it encapsulates everything from your post in a single, memorable phrase. That alone is such a great technique because as a reader I can remember and apply your advice so easily.

I love the intimate zoomed-in moments in people’s writing. But sometimes I get to the end of a post and realise I’ve been engaged all the way through, but haven’t got the overall idea of what they were wanting to say/teach.

That’s where the Zoom-Out is so essential. And now i have the words to describe it when I see it/ use it or miss it.

Thank you. I’ll definitely be applying this tip to my writing in future.

I love the intimate zoomed-in moments, too. They make writing worth reading, even if I know “the lesson” already. This is especially true for me when people share personal experiences because those are the stories only they can tell.

Thank you for your lovely comment, Alison 🙂

August 8, 2018 at 10:55 am

“They make writing worth reading, even if I know “the lesson” already. This is especially true for me when people share personal experiences”

Yes, I agree. Even when I know ‘the lesson’ those personal stories are such a source of connection and also help me deepen my insights.

August 7, 2018 at 1:10 pm

Good catchphrase, Henneke! You are like a fly 😉

(with those multi-faceted eyes that look at the same things in 100 different ways)

August 7, 2018 at 1:16 pm

I could not agree more, Kitty!

I love the way Henneke draws in knowledge and information from all over the place, extracts writing and life wisdom from it and shares with us ?

August 7, 2018 at 7:05 pm

Now, there’s another idea for a blog post! ??

August 7, 2018 at 8:39 pm

Darn. And you’ll draw those eyes, too. I have to start keeping my metaphors to mahself! ?

August 7, 2018 at 9:10 pm

Go for it! I’d love to read your post about the fly’s eyes. I’ve just been reading about them. So fascinating … they have an almost 360-degree view but they can’t focus on an image.

August 7, 2018 at 12:28 pm

I had just published the first version of a blog post on “Love till the end of my life”. The title was personal, but there was not much more where I zoomed in.

In fact, I’m quite a zoomed-out writer, who sees and paints the big picture. Because it is through abstractions that I personally can understand life, the world, and everything.

About an hour later, this blogpost landed in my inbox. It was a revelation. I recognized how true and important it is what Henneke writes here. But it had never been explained to me this clearly.

I went back to my blogpost and started it with a zoomed-in scene.

Our texts are often good in content, but fail to engage to the max. We need reminders as engaging as Hennekes to improve our writing.

August 7, 2018 at 7:04 pm

Thank you so much for sharing your story, Ton. It makes me happy when people can instantly implement my advice.

In my experience, most writers are good at zooming out, but forget to zoom in. That zoomed-in scene can make a big difference 🙂

August 7, 2018 at 12:00 pm

This is good technique…

Drawing in the readers and then spilling the beans – to help them understand is a solid idea.

Zoom in..zoom out – my new catchphrase for this week.

Thank you. Stay Awesome.

August 7, 2018 at 7:02 pm

That’s it. Zoom in. Zoom out.

Happy zooming, Rohan! 🙂

Books and courses

Follow proven templates for specific writing tasks, practice your skills, and get professional feedback so you become a confident business writer. Take on any writing project with gusto. Learn more about books and courses

About Henneke

I never saw myself as a writer, but in my early forties, I learned how to write and discovered the joy of writing. Now, I’d like to empower you to find your voice, share your ideas and inspire your audience. Learn how I can help you

Popular topics

Sales copywriting

Blog writing for business

Your writing voice

Tips for beginning writers

The writing process

Improve your writing skills

Writing examples

Popular blog posts

Recent blog posts

Free Snackable Writing Course

Get 16 concise emails and learn how to write more persuasive content.

Zoom just got its biggest makeover in a decade — and it’s all about AI

If you're sick of the same old Zoom, you're in for a treat

Zoom users need to hunker down for some big changes coming to their favorite meeting app. The company has announced that it is using AI to streamline its video-calling experience to make working with it more pleasant. It's the first major overhaul Zoom has received in around 10 years, so it'll definitely be a system shock for dedicated users. 

What's changing in Zoom?

According to a recent Zoom Blog post , the company is calling its new layout Zoom Workplace. Obviously, the biggest change is the overall look and feel. There are four color themes along with the basic gray backdrop.

This alone changes the app's look and feel, giving it a more personalized design. Zoom also added immersive experiences that the host of the call use to change up the feel.

Another cool change to Zoom Workplace is a new multi-speaker view that puts the meeting leaders on a virtual stage while the rest of the attendees appear to be in a virtual audience. 

Zoom also added a document collaboration feature that lets users import third-party documents and edit text during meetings. This could be a great way to streamline collaboration since users don't need to flip to Google Docs or a separate app to work with text. Meetings will also show PDFs, videos, and other items needed for participants.

When a meeting ends, a Meeting Event hub pulls together everything shared during it, making it easier to see the important documents and other key items. It'll even show AI companion summaries in this area.

The app also has a new portrait lighting feature that uses AI to light up a user's face when their lighting is poor. Or it could darken the background, bringing the user to the forefront of the shot. 

Sign up to get the BEST of Tom’s Guide direct to your inbox.

Upgrade your life with a daily dose of the biggest tech news, lifestyle hacks and our curated analysis. Be the first to know about cutting-edge gadgets and the hottest deals.

People meeting in loud areas will like the personalized audio isolation feature. It helps voices sound clear when there's a lot of noise in the background, blocking out some of the background noise and creating a more enjoyable meeting experience.

A small change comes to the emoji reactions, which are bigger and more present than in the old versions of the software.

Team Chat is becoming a big part of Zoom. It seems like it's trying to become more like Slack with the introduction of Shared spaces in Team Chat, which lets users create a grouping of channels to organize conversations. Another Slack-like feature is Team Chat tabs, which keep channel-related assets like links, whiteboards, and resources together.

Using Zoom Workspace

To take advantage of these new features, you must be on an eligible paid plan. If on one, account owners and users must update their Zoom app to version 6.0.0 to see Zoom Workspace and all the new features it offers.

There's no word on when Zoom intends to bring the features to free users or exactly which paid plans are eligible, so you'll need to download the latest version and see if it's there.

More from Tom's Guide

• Zoom for Apple Vision Pro will let callers see your digital Persona — complete with facial expressions
• Adobe Premiere Pro is going all-in on AI — testing Sora, Runway and Pika Labs
• iPhone 16 Pro major camera upgrade just leaked

Dave LeClair is the Senior News Editor for Tom's Guide, keeping his finger on the pulse of all things technology. He loves taking the complicated happenings in the tech world and explaining why they matter. Whether Apple is announcing the next big thing in the mobile space or a small startup advancing generative AI, Dave will apply his experience to help you figure out what's happening and why it's relevant to your life.

I reviewed Windows 11, and these are 3 things Windows 12 has to do better

A new Mac calculator app could launch soon — here's what to expect

Tour de Romandie 2024: live stream cycling online

Most Popular

• 2 Target stops selling Blu-Ray movies — here’s where you can still get them
• 3 Helix Midnight vs Amerisleep AS3: Which is the best side sleeper mattress for you?
• 4 FIFA and Apple close to $1 billion TV deal for new tournament — what we know
• 5 Walmart Plus just announced free Xbox Game Pass and Apple Music perks — here’s how to get them

GET TEACHING TIPS AND FREE RESOURCES

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

The Brown Bag Teacher

Teach the Children. Love the Children. Change the World.

September 19, 2015

Narrative Writing: Zooming into Small Moments

Watermelon vs. seed moments.

At the beginning of the week, we started with the hands-on. So often in writing we forget to start with the concrete and move to the representational. It’s best practice in math (and we totally do that) but for writing we somehow always jump to the pencil.

So, we cut into the watermelon to make it more manageable. (Then, #teacherfail – I BOUGHT A SEEDLESS WATERMELON. <insert every face palm emoji here> Thankfully there were still white seed, so our metaphor continued. Students decided that the cut watermelon was definitely more manageable to eat and talk about.

We then made the connection that the HUGE watermelon was just like our “List Stories”. I went to the park, then I played on the slide. Then I went on the swim. Finally it was dark. I went home. We talked that knowing what happened is very different than knowing all the details.

Relating it to Ourselves

We went back to our writing journals and brought them back to the carpet. Students shared “ Watermelon Stories ” in their journals that they may need to revisit. (Note – this totally wasn’t a shaming lesson and totally voluntary. I love pulling examples from our own writing because it makes it much more real. ( Snag this organizer for your classroom here. )

As students shared one of their watermelon stories, I asked – “So ___________, instead of writing about the WHOLE __________, what part can you go back and describe?” When students picked specific parts (hitting the piñata, riding the roller coaster), we called these ‘Seed Moments’.

Finally, it was writing time! As students worked, I delivered plates of watermelon as a motivator and reminder to think small. Then, I started conferencing with my habitual list-story writers. 😉

Using Mentor Texts

Putting it into action, shared writing.

This friend is sharing about his recent trip to the zoo, seeing tigers. My favorite line – “One did not look fun. He was lame.” Hahahaha – classic and perfect 1st grade writing. (Note – he does go on to explain the lame tiger behavior.)

• Opinion Writing ( blog post , resources , bundle )
• Narrative Writing (blog post, resources , mentor texts , bundle)
• Inform/Explain Writing ( blog post , resources , bundle )
• How-To Writing ( blog post , resources , bundle )

Get Free Teaching Resources!

Join me for weekly classroom updates and free resources that are just-right for your guided math classroom!

Sweet! Thanks so much for joining me. Now check your email to confirm your address & snag your freebies. Happy Teaching! -Catherine

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

Related Posts

Reader Interactions

September 19, 2015 at 2:58 pm

Such wonderful lessons! I am wondering what type of writing journals you use. I really like the wider lines and the area to put a picture at the top of the page. Thank you for sharing more inspirational ideas!

September 19, 2015 at 10:08 pm

Hi Mandy! I actually picked up some Primary Writing journals from Dollar Tree (just for my struggle . I haven't seen them since. I know you can order them on Amazon and Lakeshore, too…but they are really expensive. I actually prefer real composition notebooks but know that my struggling writers need the extra support!

September 20, 2015 at 12:50 pm

Order from Dollar Tree online:)

September 20, 2015 at 12:52 pm

Unforuntaley, this is one product they aren't selling online. So, you have to luck out that your store is selling them!

September 19, 2015 at 7:32 pm

I LOVE the anchor chart!!!

September 19, 2015 at 8:21 pm

I absolutely love your posts about Writing Workshop! I am definitely going to try this lesson, watermelon, binoculars, and all with my kinders later in the year! Thanks so much for sharing, Catherine!

September 20, 2015 at 2:29 am

Another amazing post about Writing Workshop! Thank you so much for sharing. We are working on small moments this week. Thank you!

September 20, 2015 at 8:55 am

What a fantastic post! I love that you point out how many times in writing we just quickly jump to the pencil and don't take time to "build up." These are fantastic mini lessons. Thank you so much for sharing!

Kelly Lattes and Lunchrooms

September 20, 2015 at 10:50 am

A really useful post. Thank you. I would be interested to know which mentor texts you use for other skills – both reading and writing.

September 26, 2015 at 2:20 pm

It did this "seed moments" lesson with my kiddos this week. My husband and I had a long discussion about whether or not you can still buy watermelons with seeds!!?? I should have just gone for it like you did…I'm sure your kids will remember it for a long time :0) Great post! I'm trying hard to incorporate more writing. Keep the ideas coming!!

October 9, 2015 at 1:15 am

Night of the veggie monster is a great mentor text!

November 18, 2015 at 11:30 pm

Thank you so much! This helps me explain what a small moment is to my son in 2nd grade with out having to email his teacher!

February 14, 2023 at 10:26 am

What I encountered for the current year that worked was having leaders at creation organizations let me know that they like my material and believe should accomplish something with it. At any rate, despite the fact that we want to continue to compose, walker yellowstone jacket

April 8, 2023 at 9:01 am

When you think of comfortable and stylish outerwear, a hoodie comes to mind. If you are looking for this type of hoodie, I heartily suggest you try this project Gap pink hoodie. This hoodie has the best combination of style and comfort.

April 8, 2023 at 8:20 am

Your teaching skill is so fantastic I really loved and appreciate it i wish all student have a teacher liked you.

May 3, 2023 at 1:26 pm

Want to purchase a comfortable and cozy attire but on a pocket-friendly amount, well my suggestion is to get the New Edition Legacy Tour Jacket which is available in cool dark color.

April 8, 2023 at 9:00 am

When you think of comfortable and stylish outerwear, a hoodie comes to mind. If you are looking for this type of hoodie, I heartily suggest you try this project gap pink hoodie . This hoodie has the best combination of style and comfort.

November 15, 2023 at 4:42 pm

We supply all materials used in treating and cleaning of any type of defaced currency, Pounds, CFA France, Euros, Dollars and other currencies. Our qualified professionals are ever ready to meet and handle the clean if you so wish, also we help and clean for the customer who don’t have money to buy Chemical/Materials after registration. buy ssd solution online BUY HIGH QUALITY SSD CHEMICALS SOLUTION FOR CLEANING BLACK MONEY ssd chemical solution price ssd chemical solution for cleaning black money ssd chemical solution ingredients pdf how to make ssd solution black money cleaning chemicals suppliers ssd solution price in pakistan ssd solution cleaning lab Buy SSD Chemical Solution Online Buy Ssd Chemical Buy SSD chemical Solution Online SSD chemical solution cleaningblacknotes SSD CHEMICAL SOLUTION FOR CLEANING BLACK MONEY SSD Chemical Solution Price SSD Solution Chemical – to clean black money SSD Chemical Solution Online – SSD Chemical Solution Online SSD CHEMICAL SOLUTION FOR CLEANING BLACK MONEY Buy SSD CHEMICAL, ACTIVATION POWDER and MACHINE Buy SSD chemical Solution Online Buy SSD Chemical Solution Online buy ssd chemical solution ssd chemical solution price black money cleaning chemicals suppliers ssd chemical solution ingredients pdf ssd chemical solutions https://09uu0u0.com/

November 29, 2023 at 7:49 am

Are you an outdoor enthusiast looking for the perfect companion to enhance your adventures? If so, have you considered the Yellowstone Vest ? This versatile and reliable piece of outdoor gear has been gaining popularity among nature lovers, hikers, and explorers alike.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Please go to the Instagram Feed settings page to create a feed.

• Administrators
• Evidence-Based Writing
• U.S. History Lessons
• Supports for Close Reading
• A Blended Classroom
• Smart Assessment Tools
• Research-Based
• Created by Experts

Moving from notes to an organized and well-supported essay is a heavy lift for adolescent writers — and for their teachers.

Templates for argumentative and explanatory essays

Zoom In templates help scaffold student writing, using interactive outlines, tips, and sentence starters. Teachers can differentiate instruction by assigning individual students either a high or low level of writing support.

Multiple drafts make perfect    

After students draft their essays, they review them using a student-friendly interactive rubric , with categories found in the Common Core, C3, PARCC, and Smarter Balanced frameworks.  

Not just any essays – historical essays  

Zoom In asks students to both write and read the way that historians do. Each essay calls for historical background — context — in the first paragraph, in order to orient the reader to what was happening at the time. When students cite an author and document as support, they are asked to provide information about the author that will help explain his or her perspective on the topic.

WHAT THEY'RE SAYING:

“Zoom In’s writing scaffolds allowed my students to take the nuts and bolts out and really focus on that sophistication that leads them to a higher level of thinking.”

Jennifer Bremmer, Eighth Grade Social Studies Teacher, California