Remote Learning is nowadays the most paramount method to learn any course or curriculum due to the spread of infectious disease in all places in the world. There are many Websites and Apps to enable virtual learning. One can obtain knowledge by being at home or at a convenient location with the help of the Internet.
In schools and colleges, teachers now prefer Online Apps to educate their students remotely. There are many Remote Apps to instruct lessons virtually to students, One such prominent App, liked by many tutors is the Zoom App. Zoom is a cloud-based remote video learning platform.
This video conferencing App has many features such as live chats, connect online by Audio only or Video only or both, One-on-One meet, Group meetings, Screen Sharing, ability to record videos and audio, and etc..
Zoom has recently announced that various new features have been added to the App to augment the learning experience. It includes,
- Customized Gallery View: In this, the Hosts can modify virtual class seating provisions which give more power to the teachers.
- Multi-pinning: This feature helps the students, wherein, the teachers can make use of Multi-pinning to attach up to nine members on-screen in their custom personal view. Learners who are hard of hearing can affix both teacher and interpreter on the screen.
- Audio Controls: With the unmute with consent feature, the teacher can choose if they want to unmute a particular student.
- Multi-spotlight for presentation: The tutor can select up to nine students for a focused group meeting view, the focused collection of students is visible to the entire class for the presentation.
Zoom also says that links to the classroom should not be shared by the users on the public domain, if shared, then it should be changed to avoid disruption.
Apart from this Zoom informs that, teachers can avoid zoom-bombing or meeting hijacking by using several measures included in the App like the waiting rooms, passwords, and other useful aspects.
Teachers can secure the virtual classroom experience by using the following methods-
- Disable join before the host so that the participants cannot connect to the meeting before the teachers.
- A meeting passcode is made necessary.
- Only validated users are given permission to join the class/meeting.
- Lock the virtual classroom so that no one else can enter the classroom once the class starts.
- Disable screen sharing for students that are without permission and disable chat elements so that users cannot chat with each other.
- Prevent participants from renaming and unmuting themselves.