Tips to Engage with your Zoom Audience

My Experience as TeenTechSF STEM Workshop Chair

The STEM Workshop team for TeenTechSF, a teen-run nonprofit with the mission of providing equal access to tech for all teens, typically fulfills its mission by offering interactive, hands-on workshops in schools and community centers around the Bay Area. However, like many other organizations, we were faced with a dilemma: four out of five of our major offerings required physical material (to be “hands-on”), yet we needed to continue providing our workshops without being in the same physical setting.

That’s why our team came together to form the TeenTechSF Summer Workshop Series, with six new workshops and one adapted workshop. The series was so successful that not only did we serve a larger audience than we would have in a typical summer, 95% of attendees rated the workshops 5/5 and 100% agreed that the workshops were professional, enough support for our team to make the decision of continuing online workshops (at least) through the fall.

Yes, the hard work and deliberation behind creating the new STEM workshops, reviewing them, and refining them played a significant role (which I may talk about in a future post), however, the mechanisms we took advantage of with Zoom allowed the audience to have a much more enjoyable experience (which I will be getting into in this post).

The Difficulty behind Remote Workshops

In a typical workshop or classroom setting, it’s easy to monitor participants’ facial expressions and computer screens to see how far along they are getting, how much they are grasping the material, and exactly where they need help. In the physical classroom, it’s TA’s walking monitoring the room, and for physical workshops, it’s members of the STEM workshop team. This brings me to my first Zoom “mechanism”: cameras. I will walk through the different “mechanisms” of Zoom in order of lowest to highest response rate, meaning that more participants are likely to engage using that specific feature.

Zoom “Mechanisms”

Cameras (if possible)

Having cameras on in a Zoom call brings a sense of normalcy and warmth, as you are having a conversation with real people as opposed to black squares, where you don’t really know what is going on behind the black square. At least with cameras on, you can read participants’ facial expressions, follow up when they look confused, and get to enjoy the happy facial expressions that come when the participant is able to get a line of code to work!

I have been on Zoom calls where cameras are required to be on, and where cameras are not required to be on. If you’re concerned about losing audience members to a camera-required policy, you can always mention that “out of respect for the workshop leader, guest, or speaker, you ask that everyone turns on their cameras and stays engaged”.

Chat

Prompt participants to type “done” when they’re done with a certain activity, or to type out the problem they are facing if they need help. Yes, definitely ask questions to your audience out loud, however, your audience is typically much more likely to respond when they just have to type and note unmute their microphone. When you type the question in the chat to follow up, you’re prompting participants to engage using that feature.

You could even have someone there to stimulate the conversation! Another workshop team member can give their answer, as participants are more likely to respond if they don’t have to be the first to start the conversation.

Polling

This feature has by far the highest response rate! While chat may generate some responses to your questions and promote some engagement, participants are able to answer polls with the click of a button! In most cases, 100% of TeenTechSF STEM Workshop attendees are responsive to polls.

So what can you use the polling feature for? The occasional check-in is a perfect place to implement a poll — “how are you feeling about the material?”, with the answer choices being “I’m doing great!” or “I’m having trouble understanding this”. Then you can follow up with the people who answered the latter choice and ensure that 100% of attendees are accounted for. Lastly, polls are perfect to ask for overall ratings of your event at the end of the workshop.

I hope you found this helpful as you manage your own Zoom audience, and feel free to reach out if you have any questions!