Set Up Your Environment

Choose a quiet location. Use a headset or earbuds with a microphone. Avoid showing distractions in the background. Find a location with good lighting. Position your camera so that your face is well lit. Natural light or indoor lighting should be directed toward your face and not the camera. If using a laptop, consider raising your web camera so that it is at eye-level.

Instructional tips

Set expectations before the meeting begins. Provide students with a structure for the web conference. Send a course announcement or use the meeting description to communicate what topics will be covered and how students should prepare. Where possible provide materials such as PowerPoint slides or handouts ahead of the web conference. Set rules for how students should interact. For example, instruct students to keep their microphones muted until they have a question or you may want students to submit all questions via chat.

Always record synchronous sessions so students can go back and review (make sure all attendees are aware that you are recording). Technical issues are inevitable, and some students will need to re-watch content that they miss. Zoom recordings are automatically uploaded to Kaltura and machine captions are generated. Share your recordings to the course.

Make sessions interactive. Consider using breakout rooms. Both Zoom and Microsoft Teams support breakout groups. This is a great way to organize students into smaller groups where they can discuss a problem or topic.

Use polls to keep students engaged. For BlueJeans meetings, we recommend using a polling tool such as TurningPoint , Canvas Quizzes , or Qualtrics . Zoom and Microsoft Teams  have built in support for polling.

Be considerate of students' individual situations. Some students are in environments, where they feel uncomfortable turning on their web cameras. Invite students to turn on their web cameras, but only if they feel comfortable doing so.