Post 181: The Characteristics of a Boring Zoom Presentation

Post 181: What is a boring Zoom meeting is like

We are now in the age of COVID19 and all social interaction is now done through Zoom. I go to church through Zoom. I meet family members through Zoom. And face to face faculty now matter their level from elementary school through college all teach through Zoom.  As instructors, we want to keep our Zoom presentations interesting, and like in the classroom, we don't want to bore our students.  So far, it has been close to 3 weeks of Zoom for me, and I have been to both boring Zoom meetings and interesting Zoom meetings. In my next blog post, I will talk about the characteristics of a fun, interesting Zoom meeting.

The Boring Zoom Meetings went like this:

1. One person speaking on a irrelevant topic in a monotone voice for a long period of time. This period would lecture on and on and not always look straight into the camera. (Yes, you have to look at that dot in the camera to look like you are looking at the students, not at your notes all the time.)

2. The person was reading from his notes, and having trouble figuring out the Zoom interface board. She never once asked us to participate, interact, or ask questions.

3. No student interaction. If I walked away to grab a snack, nobody would notice the difference and from the kitchen, I could still hear her voice droning on.

4. Lack of modalities. There were no videos. There was no break from her talking about material I did not find interesting.

5. No effort to elucidate how her lesson relates to me, my life and why I should care learning about.

6. There was no effort for group work nor did she seem to care what we thought.

7. I decided not to go to these Zoom meetings anymore because I did not feel like I belonged and she did not take the time to give us a 'community of learner' feel to the class.

Therefore, the same elements that make a face to face boring classroom presentation goes for a Zoom presentation. The same rules of engagement that works in a face to face classroom works for a Zoom presentation as well.  As a student, I did not physically need to be there since she would record the meeting and I could watch it later on anyway. To make it worth my while, she needs to better interact with her students to give students a reason for being there in real time.