Keep Teaching: Virtual Library Instruction Resources

Considerations for Student Participation

It is important to determine the level of participation that you expect or will allow when students are participating in a live session and be sure to adjust your settings as desired.

  • Students who are not able to participate in any way may feel disengaged, or may feel that their opinions and perspectives are not valued.
  • However, managing participation among multiple students with video and audio can be challenging. Multiple students may attempt to comment at the same time, and some students may feel they are not able to participate if other students are quicker to comment. 

Recommendations:

  • If you are collaborating with a course instructor, discuss expectations for student participation in a session in advance. 
  • Review the options for verbal and non-verbal participation on the right and select those that are most appropriate to your instructional context.  For larger courses, it may be more appropriate to allow students to communication primarily (or only) through chat or reactions.
  • Clarify your expectations for student participation with the students at the beginning of a session, or in advance, if possible. 
  • If you are planning to allow students to comment verbally, develop a strategy for indicating when students can speak and in what order, to avoid situations in which multiple students are trying to speak at the same time. 

Options for Student Participation

Zoom provides several options which you can use to encourage or allow students to participate in live Zoom sessions. These include:

Managing Student Participation

For guidance on managing student participation in a Zoom session, see the following: