I'm torn when I talk about tweaking online classes.

It's the wrong focus.

The problem isn't Zoom classes. It's the desire to recreate what we did before... https://twitter.com/timbocop/status/1331612376429424642

Assuming your new teaching will look like your old teaching is a barrier. Scrap your zoom class*. Delete. It's that nice painting that doesn't match anything in the house. It's stopping you from moving on

*You might end up doing a zoom class, but only if it fits your purpose.

This doesn't mean throwing out all your practices, but reconsidering them in a new context, from as detached a POV as possible, asking: (why) is approach necessary? What is important here?

This is where principles are important: to help you interrogate entrenched practices.

Some good principles include:
-Learners are not under your control
-That’s a good thing, since they need to learn not just content but ways of learning
-What learners do is more important than what teachers do

More principles:
- Learners reinterpret your plans and designs
- They also do other things (before, during and after)
- You can influence these other things

The great obstacle for those new to online learning is the tendency to focus too much on themselves and their role.

The key lesson: teaching is not about you.

Hold your usual practices, approaches and assumptions lightly.

How can you put yourself in the background, so it doesn't matter if you can read facial expressions or observe "engagement".

Let your ego fade into the background. Fit your teaching into the wider picture of what your students are doing. More importantly, help them to see how it fits.

As a thought experiment:

What could you do if you started thinking again from scratch? What could your learners do? Not within a session but across a week or two weeks or a month?

How could you make your teaching about what learners do and the connections they make with each other and with ideas?

How could you let students engage with content on their terms, so they don't have to learn about it in a specific way, time and place dictated by you?

How could you let students drive what they do, when they do it, and how they do it, and still help them achieve the most important goals of your course?

How could you use technology lightly, so that it serves as a base from which students can go off and explore, and then return and discuss in safety?

How could you let go of some control so that your students can invest more of themselves in the course? How could you encourage them to take ownership of their learning goals and activities?

How could you do all of this in a way that encourages building relationships (with you and with each other) over time?

Some of this might involve Zoom classes. But if these focus not on you but on students discussing their ideas & their activities outside of class, then it doesn't matter whether all students are paying attention at that moment in time.

I do appreciate how difficult this shift in mindset is with such limited headspace, but this is my best answer to questions like "how can I make sure students are engaged in my online session?"