In honor of Dan’s annual tweet, I want to encourage anyone teaching remotely to check out his book. I mean it when I say it’s the most actionable guidance on teaching live sessions online that I’ve encountered (ToC below).

Here's a thread of some of the insights from this book: https://twitter.com/danmlevy/status/1286291046834601984

Zoom's breakout rooms are a fantastic way to engage students. However, unless you want them to spend the time chatting, it is important to be explicit about what you want students to do and produce during this time. Here’s an example slide:

The chat function in Zoom is a double-edged sword. You can control whether to:

Ban it completely
Permit it freely
Permit it under certain norms (this is what I prefer - it can be a great way to elicit reflections on a prompt)

Chapter 5 includes a checklist on using chat:

Visuals can be engaging, but they also take over a large share of your students’ screens and attention, and can discourage human connection. So use Screen Sharing carefully, and consider stopping your screenshare of slides when you don’t need them (I need to work on this).

The book also proposes using alternative visuals, such as:

1) Using physical props
2) Adapting your virtual background so that your face and your slides can be watched simultaneously
3) Using a whiteboard

Dan shares some really cool examples from other faculty in the book.

Creating community is hard, but can start before class begins. Here are 2 simple tips:

1) Invite students to answer a fun question in the chat ( @kathytpham does this).
2) Play music from a collaborative playlist that your students create.

Here’s a slide from my Spring course:

Polling: In addition to Zoom's anonymous polling, you can create non-anonymous polls by asking students to use reaction buttons. Since you will know who voted for what, you can invite specific students to defend their view.

(e.g., Victoria: you voted “yes”; can you tell us why?)

Last but not least, @danmlevy uploaded a bunch of useful resources to the book’s website. Whether you're teaching online for the first time or a pro, I highly recommend checking these out! https://www.teachingeffectivelywithzoom.com/chapter-resources

Congrats to @danmlevy for realizing this book was needed and writing it in just over a month! It's that kind of responsiveness, compassion, and commitment that I admire in him, and it's all over this book.