A few months ago I had to attend a seminar scheduled on the same day as my tutorials were. So, I decided to do something a little different from after asking permission from my subject coordinator: I live-streamed my tutorial online using Zoom.
Zoom – too cool for school?
Zoom is a communication platform (similar to Skype) that provides remote conferencing services using cloud computing. Although it is primarily used for meetings and video-conferences, it can easily be adapted to a teaching context. UTS has a licence that allows every staff member to access it and use all its functionalities. You can download the app or software on your desktop, tablet or smartphone by logging in here.
It’s easy to set up your meeting in Zoom, whether participants need to enter a password to access it and whether you would like the meeting to be recorded and stored in the cloud. The platform also allows you to have online polls that you can set up before the online session. Participants can respond to the polls, click a button to raise a hand or ask to slow down the speech pace. On top of this, Zoom records the video of the online session and stores it in the cloud: you can download it or share the link of the video with the participants.
In other words, this platform is too cool for school. But is it an effective learning and teaching tool?
To answer this question and to understand my students’ response to this new way of delivering subject material, I did action research and administered a survey after the online tutorial took place.
Adopting Zoom to deliver a business subject
17 undergraduate and postgraduate students from the Business school participated in a semi-structured survey. The respondents were almost evenly spread between postgrads (47.1%) and undergrads (52.9%). Most of the surveyed students had never taken part in a similar activity in their degree (94%). Only one respondent had previously participated in an online tutorial using Wiley plus for a subject in Science.
Overall, the live-stream tutorial was a success. The average enjoyment of this experience was 4.53 (“how much did you enjoy the online tutorial experience?”, on a scale from 1=a little – 5= a lot). The vast majority of students (16 out 17) also said they would be happy to be involved in such activity in the future. Students particularly enjoyed the online poll feature and found their peers were “much more participative than in normal tutorials”. Some people also liked the convenience aspect of it: it was a faster and easier way to participate in in-class discussions, and one student even commented “…I loved doing uni work from bed in my PJs”.
Even though live streaming a tutorial was well accepted among my students, they also pointed out that this teaching approach has some limitations. For example, some students mentioned that it was easier to get distracted during the tutorial and that typing answers in the chat limited discussion. Others pointed out it was a little hard to toggle between the chat screen and the video screen and to take notes. Lastly, a few students had technical issues during the session relating to audio, signal and video streaming.
Some recommendations and caveats
There is growing evidence suggesting that online learning has many capabilities to complement traditional in-class learning, and I believe that Zoom can serve this purpose. Using Zoom to live stream subject content has a lot of potential to augment students’ educational experience. It can be used for online consultation, Q&A sessions, software tutorials (e.g. teaching how to use SPSS, Excel or others). Not only is it highly interactive, but it also gives students the freedom to be wherever they want to be and still participate in the subject discussions.
Try it out
Here are some recommendations if you’re new to live streaming but would like to try it in your subject:
- Get familiar with it before the actual live stream: although the interface is very user-friendly, you should get comfortable with the different tabs and features beforehand in order not to have last-minute issues.
- Teach students how to use it: explain to them how to download it, how it works and what to do to join your live stream. Don’t worry, though: many of them are millennials, and they generally pick up new technology fairly quickly!
- Allow students to interact with you verbally: some students were a little annoyed by the fact the chat was lagging and limited discussion, while others enjoyed not having to talk and typing instead. How can we make the best of both worlds? My suggestion is to allow students to interact with you both via chat and by voice. You may think it may create confusion and it would be hard to manage, however, there is a button that allows participants to “raise their hand” when they want to speak. You could inform students of this option!;
- Slow down, repeat and allow time for questions: because students may get frequently distracted during the live stream and they may experience technical issues, make sure you slow down with your explanation and repeat the key concepts if necessary;
- Use the polling feature: I think it was probably the feature students liked the most because of its interactivity! However, beware: make sure you create your ‘poll bank’ before the live stream, otherwise it may be hard to create it during the event.
For further information on Zoom and how to use it, check out the Using Zoom for teaching resource collection.
Feature image by rawpixel.