8 Remote Lab Experiences
Zoom Setup with the Web Portal
Make sure you are using a pro version of Zoom to get full functionality. Log in to zoom.us using your web browser and go to settings. You will find a lot more versatility than the limited settings in the zoom app. Key meeting settings I like:
- Auto saving chats
- Co-host
- Polling
- Screen sharing
- Whiteboard
- Nonverbal feedback
- Join different meetings simultaneously on desktop
- Breakout room, allowing host to assign when scheduling
Under recording settings
- Automatic recording to the local computer
- Save chat messages
Synchronous Demos
You can enable views of multiple elements from multiple directions by have multiple smart phones in the zoom meeting, pointed at different things. Suggested by Julian Yamaura in an ASEE webinar 2020-06-18. He talked about having views of multiple different instruments in real time. https://resources.asee.org/ has more.
Tracking Attendance and Participation
From the web portal for Zoom, you can use the reports menu tab to generate CSV reports for recent meetings. A usage report will tell you who was there, when they joined and how long they were there. A poll report will provide all the answers to any poll questions you asked, either anonymous or by username depending on the question setting. A poll asking about netid could help aligning external logins or aliased logins to student identity.
Create a meeting template with multiple poll questions as a basis for recurring sessions.
Multiple Meetings!
This approach is possible now that zoom allows multiple simultaneous meetings. Create a recurring main Zoom meeting and have all students join that meeting at the start of the session. Make any explanations to the entire large group. Keep the volume up on that meeting so you can always hear people in the main room. (Use the volume mixer on windows, or a third party app like background music on the mac to separately control the volume on each meeting. Unfortunately, it looks like background music broke with the update to Mac Big Sur, but sound control (commercial app, signed developer certificates) has a beta that I will try out.)
Get each TA to create their own recurring Zoom meeting on their own accounts. (It appears there can only be two meetings open at the same time on a single host account.) When the intro is done, have all the students and TAs join those meetings in addition to the main meeting. It looks like you can’t be recording more than one meeting at a time, so if you need recordings of the TA meetings you will need them to make them for you.
As instructor, join each of the TA meetings so you have the main meeting and maybe three sub meetings. If you join them sequentially, you can arrange them on the screen in the same relationship as the volume sliders in windows volume mixer, or mac background music. Set the volume low in the TA meetings so you can overhear in the same way that you do walking around the lab plaza.
When you need to address the