Category: Online Synchronous

Resources for faculty teaching Online Synchronous (i.e., in Teams)

Active Learning on Zoom: Padlet

Reading Time: 3 minutesPromoting active participation in class is beneficial for students because they are incorporated into the activities and are contributors to their learning process. Essentially, students obtain and retain more knowledge by doing. It can be challenging to find ways to keep students engaged in these ways when teaching online. Padlet is an innovative tool that can help enhance participation, as...

Active Learning on Zoom: Annotate

Reading Time: 3 minutesOpportunities to share reactions, expressions, and ideas are vital to the creation of a rich learning environment and classroom community. Even when classes are conducted virtually, the online classroom environment should be one where students feel safe to share their ideas and opinions and otherwise contribute to discussions. The annotate feature on Zoom can help students develop social skills, collaborate,...

Active Learning on Zoom: Mentimeter Word Clouds

Reading Time: 2 minutesThe power of connecting ideas, feelings, and words in class is beneficial for the learning process, it can help clarify understanding and allow students to get a sense of their peers’ reactions to a key topic, and it also has the potential to help students track how their thoughts and feelings about certain course-related themes evolve over time. Mentimeter word...

More Ways to Up Engagement in Your Synchronous Online Class

Reading Time: 5 minutesCreating Opportunities for Higher Levels of Engagement Students experience higher learning gains when they are taught through a more interactive classroom (Knight & Wood, 2005). In this first section, find some ideas to consider for structuring higher levels of participation and engagement during your online synchronous Zoom or MS teams class meeting time. Supporting and Managing Class Engagement Levels One...

Getting Students to Participate in Breakout Rooms

Reading Time: 7 minutes“[B]reakout rooms do not always magically create engagement and higher levels of learning.” (Saltz & Heckman, 2020, para. 16) Breakout groups are used as a discussion technique to increase participation and group-based learning. However, pair and group activities can be cumbersome in online synchronous meetings, especially when, as professor, you cannot see all groups and monitor student conversations at the same time...

Two Stories of Testing in the Cloud

Reading Time: 4 minutesThis Faculty Story was co-written by Mariam Raza (Office Administration, Administrative Business Management) and Trish Stevenson (Public Relations). Mariam Raza has 15+ years of business support, executive support, and operational management experience. She joined Conestoga in 2017, teaching in the Office Administration certificate and diploma programs, and later in the Administrative Business Management graduate certificate program. She is a process...

Proposing, Designing, and Presenting Online – Robotics and Automation Capstone Projects

Reading Time: 3 minutesJohn Tielemans has been full-time with Conestoga College since 1998. With a background in physics and nuclear systems, he brings a strong desire to learn into his teaching. He is proud of watching students grow, excel and succeed from entry into the program through to completion with unique capstone projects. John is proud to be working with such a talented Engineering...

Removing a Participant from a Live Zoom Class

Reading Time: 3 minutesThings to Consider Students may be joining a live Zoom class from a variety of locations, devices, and living situations. Many international students may be joining a class from locations all over the world. As such, issues may come up such as students having to be quiet during a class because they are joining from a different timezone which may...