{"id":1924,"date":"2020-11-09T12:41:06","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T20:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/osuteaching\/?p=1924"},"modified":"2023-12-08T11:58:02","modified_gmt":"2023-12-08T19:58:02","slug":"leveraging-zoom-tools-to-engage-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/osuteaching\/2020\/11\/09\/leveraging-zoom-tools-to-engage-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Leveraging Zoom Tools to Engage Students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Student engagement is indispensable in the current remote and blended teaching and learning environment. James Lang, author of the well-known Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning<\/i>, speaks to this challenge in the newly published Distracted: Why Students Can\u2019t Focus and What You Can Do About It<\/i><\/a>. \u201cWe will not succeed in teaching today\u2019s students unless we make a fundamental shift in our thinking: away from preventing distraction<\/i> and toward cultivating attention<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Lang goes on to posit three principles about attention: Attention is an achievement rather than a given in educational settings, attention is still attainable (despite the manifold distractions clamoring for the attention of our students), and it must be intentionally cultivated to be achieved in our classrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Student engagement is indispensable in the current remote and blended teaching and learning environment. James Lang, author of the well-known Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning<\/i>, speaks to this challenge in the newly published Distracted: Why Students Can\u2019t Focus and What You Can Do About It<\/i><\/a>. \u201cWe will not succeed in teaching today\u2019s students unless we make a fundamental shift in our thinking: away from preventing distraction<\/i> and toward cultivating attention<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how can we cultivate our students\u2019 attention in the remote \u201cclassrooms\u201d of today, where our Zoom class session competes with all the other stimuli in which college students are marinated as they navigate COVID-era life? Fortunately, Yale\u2019s Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning has produced an Engaging Students through Zoom<\/a> guide that describes practical techniques to leverage the basic Zoom tools to enable active learning. Rather watch than read? The Yale Zoom guide is accompanied by five short videos that bring the techniques to life. Highlights from the guide:<\/p>\n\n\n\n