COVID-19 has forced many of us to use different means of attending class and Zoom has been instrumental here at EMU and across the country. I have some thoughts and complaints about the platform. The pros and cons I’m prefacing for Zoom will be mostly separate from the decisions professors make when we use it.
As most students and professors know, Zoom has three main features to communicate: The chat box, the microphone, and the camera. These three features work well as long as you have a strong enough internet connection and have enough bandwidth. Since last March, I have been using Zoom on a regular basis, along with many other students. I was told multiple times that my microphone was too quiet. My solution was to use headphones separate from the microphone on my computer to fix the issue.
As someone who has used Zoom on a couple of different WiFi connections and even while in a car (I wasn’t driving), I can say that if you are home and others are using bandwidth there may be connection issues. I have had professors who had to pause class to tell an individual in their house to get off the internet so that they had enough bandwidth. I have had instances where others in my house also were on Zoom and we all had difficulty staying connected to Zoom. An ethernet cable helped solve that problem, but unfortunately, we only had one. On EMU’s WiFi, here in the dorms, the connection hasn’t been an issue.
Zoom has other features going for it as well. WiFi is an issue for some people, but that’s not an issue that is on the shoulders of the developers of Zoom itself. Within Zoom, there is the capability to record a meeting. If you miss class, as long as the teacher records it, you can go back and watch what you missed.
The second option is to share screen and transmit video or audio to others in the meeting. While audio and video shared through Zoom can work, the quality is largely dependent on your internet connection. A slow connection will lead to lower audio or video quality. There is also the option to ‘annotate’ the screen while another person is sharing their screen. Aside from being able to confuse professors while you draw on their powerpoints, this feature can help create a virtual ‘whiteboard’ for students to use it.
The third option is breakout rooms. A breakout room is a great way to divide up a class, although it can be difficult to get students to actually talk within them. Regardless, breakout rooms are a must for the software. They help make a virtual classroom more realistic even though it can be a little difficult to set up for some professors.
The last option, and one that is underutilized, is polls. These allow professors to create a more interactive online environment.
There are many other features Zoom offers, as so many of us know all too well, but overall the program is the best option available for a virtual classroom. It does well, despite sometimes being limited by the user’s internet connection. I don’t love Zoom, but I give it a pass. The software does its very best to facilitate a classroom setting. I’m eager to leave it behind for the switch back to in-person learning, but Zoom will live on long after the Pandemic is over because of its many capabilities.
