Best Practices in Preparing Live Sessions
- Start early – begin preparing for your live sessions ahead of time.
- Practice in the site where you will host the session.
- This avoids learning on-the-fly and awkward delays during the session.
- Test content and features you plan to use.
- Plan some activities and assignments which can be either prepared or debriefed during the live sessions.
- Prepare for student participation:
- What polls might you use?
- Are there opportunities to use Breakout rooms for small group discussions?
- Invite guest speakers to share their expertise and experience.
- If your guests do not have University of Illinois’ domain emails (illinois.edu), be sure to manually add their emails to your Zoom meeting in advance, so they have access.
- Look for relevant current events or topics related to your content.
- Assign your TAs with specific responsibilities, such as monitoring the session participants’ chat, or keeping notes on student participation, while you will present.
Best Practices in Conducting Live Hybrid Sessions
- Establish clear communication etiquette.
- Trust your team of navigators and TAs.
- Focus on your presentation delivery.
- Locate your room cameras and look into them occasionally to make “eye contact” with your remote learners.
Best Practices in Conducting Remote Sessions
- Prepare your space for success with proper light and sound treatment.
- Use a wired connection or a stable wireless signal to run live sessions. Have a backup connection (data pack with your phone) ready.
- Establish clear communication etiquette.
- While you may encourage students to participate with their video cameras on, realize there are several factors that may influence their ability to do so.
- They may have limited bandwidth available.
- They may only have access to one device (such as a tablet or notebook), so propping up their camera may take away access to their keyboard for taking notes, etc.
- They may have other privacy concerns.
- Use polls and breakout rooms to encourage student interactions and participation.
- Start your Live Zoom session without screen sharing. Stop your screen share time to time, so that students can you as their instructor exclusively. (Screen share dominates the Zoom display.)
