Dividing Your Class into Groups

Using Moodle

You could also create random groups in Moodle. For instructions on how to create and use groups in Moodle, go to the Creating and Using Groups page in Confluence. Using groups in Moodle can also allow you to release resources and activities in Moodle to specific groups throughout the course. 

Manual

You can divide your class list manually. Examples for how to do this include:

• Take your class list and divide it in half for T/Th courses or in thirds for M/W/F courses
• Assign A, B, and C groups (for M/W/F courses) or A and B groups (for T/Th courses) when going through your class list.  

Student Sign Up

If you are rotating only a few members of your class, you can let the students self-select to be remote for a given number of times in a semester.

• You can use SignUpGenius to give students options.
• You can also simply share a Microsoft Word document through Office365 that includes the dates for your course and the number of remote spaces for each session.

Letting students know which class they should attend

Students will need you to tell them which class period they should attend in person before the first day of class. You can let students know which class to attend through a number of ways:

• Welcome email before the beginning of class
• Announcement in Moodle

Distributing Zoom Link to Students

Moodle

You can set up a Zoom activity through Moodle that will show up on your Moodle course page. You can set up a meeting for a specific time, or you can set up a recurring meeting that can be used for multiple class sessions. Students can access Zoom through Moodle. This will be the easiest way for the class to access the link throughout the course.

Emailing a Link

You can also email a link for your Zoom meeting to your students.

Please do not distribute a link for a Zoom meeting on a public social media platform since Zoombombers may use the link to disrupt your meeting.

Distributing Handouts

Distributing PowerPoints

Tracking Attendance

Using Moodle

Moodle offers a few ways for you to take attendance. With Moodle, you can take attendance yourself or allow students to self-report their attendance. For more information on how Moodle can help with attendance, visit this Confluence page.  

Manual

Taking roll can be done similarly to your current method with the addition of looking at the Participants list in Zoom.

Covering Content

Handling all of the technology and interacting with different groups of students will take some time. Plan for that.

You will likely not be able to cover everything that you would normally cover in the classroom. For some topics, consider whether another way of presenting the information would work as well as spending time in class covering the same information.

Monitoring Questions from Students

There are a few techniques that can help you monitor student questions.

1. Make clear to remote students your preferred method for questions and the classroom.
   1. Do you prefer students to unmute themselves and ask their question aloud? 
   2. Do you prefer students to type their questions in the chat in Zoom?
   3. You may want to establish some common hand signs for the remote class. For example, thumbs up, you're muted, hard to hear, etc.
2. At the beginning of the semester, ask a few students from each in-class group to log into Zoom and monitor remote student questions from the chat to bring them to your attention. This can be especially helpful if there is a technical issue.
3. Take more frequent breaks for questions than you normally would.
4. Get in the habit of repeating student questions out loud for the benefit of both your in-person and remote students.
5. You may want to add a Question and Answer discussion forum on your Moodle site for a more in-depth discussion.

Handling Small Group Discussion

When you break your students up into small groups in the in-person classroom, divide your remote students into equivalent-sized Breakout Rooms in Zoom. Make sure to allow the remote small groups to participate in the larger debrief just like your in-person students. That will help your remote students feel more a part of the class.

Taking time to work together on larger team projects is probably best handled outside of class time.

Using Your Own Laptop/Computer

If you are using your own laptop, you will need to host the meeting from the computer cart and log into your Zoom meeting again with your laptop just like a remote participant. 

If you want to share the screen from your laptop, you will need to allow screen sharing to participants from the computer on the computer cart.

Remember to turn off your sound and microphone on any device using Zoom in the same room.

Using a Doc Cam

Our recommendation would be to digitize your content and add it to a PowerPoint. That might be the simplest way. You can use the Doc Cam, but you cannot use it in the normal way by switching the Extron device. Remember, everything in the Zoom meeting is going through the computer, so you must choose the Doc Cam as a second camera.

Fortunately, the Doc cams are also tied into the computer through a USB port. In Zoom, choose Share Screen->Advanced tab->Content from 2nd Camera. Zoom should now show both your face and the content under the Doc Cam.

Recording

You can record your Zoom session to the Cloud. Once the recording is complete, you will receive an email that the recording is complete with a link to view and download the recording. Be default, Zoom recordings are private so you'll need to share this with your students. You can share the Zoom recording link directly with the class or upload your Zoom recording to Microsoft Stream.

Remember that your course recording is FERPA-protected and should only be shared with participants who are already in the class.