Classroom Management

All live classes on Outschool take place through Zoom, a video chat platform. This article covers the most useful features and recommended settings.

💻 Speaker and Gallery View 💻

🔊 Speaker View – Default option when you start a meeting, shows a large image of the active speaker
🔲 Gallery View – Shows all attendees at the same size

You can switch between the two modes by clicking the toggle at the top right. We recommend gallery view while teaching to better monitor your students in real time.

Change Video Layout
Display Options
Recording Layouts
Spotlighting Participant’s Video
Pinning Participant’s Video
Enable Dual Monitors

💻 Avoiding Background Noise 💻

🔇 Make sure that everyone stays muted when not speaking.
🔇 Students are able to mute themselves in the same way that you mute yourself, but as the host you also have the ability to mute all participants.
🔇 If a student forgets to mute themself or is too young to do so, you can mute them by hovering over their video feed in gallery mode. (You’ll see a blue mute button there).
🔇 You’ll also be able to unmute the student from the same location.

Background Noise Suppression
Recording Good Quality Audio
Muting & Unmuting Participants

💻 Raise Hand 💻

✋🏻 Zoom offers a way for students to digitally raise their hands.
✋🏼 Students can click the ‘Participants’ button (same location as your
✋🏽 Manage Participants) to expand the participants panel.
✋🏾 At the bottom of this panel, there’s a button called “raise hand.”
✋🏿 Students can use that button to get your attention while muted
✋🏽 To lower their hand hover over their video feed in gallery mode.

Participant Controls
Reaction Icons

💻 Remove a Learner 💻

⎔ The hold feature functions like a virtual timeout and should only be used as a last resort measure.
⎔ It will kick the student out of the meeting until you choose to bring them back in.
⎔ The student will see a blank screen with the notice “waiting for host to let you back in.”
⎔ You’ll see the hold option by hovering over the student’s name on the Manage Participants screen and clicking the “more” button.

In-Meeting Security
Managing Participants

💻 Disable Name Changing 💻

✒️ We strongly recommend that you use this setting to prevent learners from changing their Zoom names.
✒️ From the Manage Participants screen, you can click on the “More” dropdown menu and uncheck the “Allow Participants to rename themselves” setting.
✒️ Please note that this change is saved in your Zoom app, so you will not need to change this every meeting.

Managing Participants
In Meeting Controls

💻 Chat Feature 💻

⌨️ You can use the chat box, accessed from the bottom of the screen, to send messages to students during class.
⌨️ You can control how the learners use the chat feature by selecting who they can chat with from the “More” dropdown menu.
⌨️ By default, group chat is enabled. You can choose to limit learners to only chat with you, the host.
⌨️ To disable chat completely, you should choose the “No one” option.
⌨️ There is not a 1:1 student messaging option, so you don’t have to worry about students private messaging each other while you’re trying to teach.

Using Chat
Controlling & Disabling Chat
Replying & Managing Chat
Chat Announcements

💻 Screen Sharing 💻

🖥 Perhaps Zoom’s most useful teaching feature, screen share lets learners see what is on your computer screen.
🖥 This could include a Powerpoint presentation, a website, a video, or anything else on your computer that would be useful for class.
🖥 Zoom also includes a built-in whiteboard as a screen share option, which can be very helpful for many classes.
🖥 To share your screen, click the green button at the bottom of your Zoom window, then select the option that you wish to share.
🖥 Remember to check the use computer sound checkbox on the bottom left of the screen share window if you wish to share a video with students, otherwise the audio will register as background noise on your side and will not be sent into the video classroom.

Sharing Your Screen
Using Dual Monitors
Video Layout with Screen Sharing
Giving Remote Control when Screen Sharing
Share Presentation as Background
Follow Presenter’s Pinter when Screen Sharing

💻 Annotation 💻

✎ Zoom also gives you the option to annotate while screen sharing.
✎ This allows you to make your class more interactive, since you can draw arrows on Powerpoints, underline complicated words in articles, and do other helpful actions to help students follow along with the material.
✎ You’ll see the annotation option at the top of the screen while you’re screen sharing. Students also have access to the same annotation tools.

If you click on the “More” dropdown menu at the top of the screen, you will have the ability to control the annotation settings.

✐ Enable/Disable Attendee Annotation: This can be useful if the students are using the annotation tools in a distracting manner
✐ Show/Hide Names of Annotators: If you have multiple learners annotating on your shared screen, you can hover over the annotation to see which learner created it.

Using Annotation on Shared Screen

Students can annotate on the screen through their ‘View Options’ menu bar at the top of your shared screen.

💻 Breakout Rooms 💻

Zoom provides a way for you to break students into separate video chat rooms in order to complete discussion exercises or other group work. You can read more about this feature in Zoom’s guide to breakout rooms.

Getting Started with Breakout Rooms
Managing Breakout Rooms
Enabling Breakout Rooms
Participating in Breakout Rooms
Pre-Assigning Participants to Breakout Rooms

Need additional Zoom support?

Check out more Zoom resources from Zoom’s help center!

Webinar Events
Live Trainings
Joining & Configuring Audio & Video
Meeting Controls
Zoom Room Features – Per Device
How Much Bandwidth do You Need
Setting Up a Test Room with Zoom
Virtual Backgrounds
Waiting Rooms
Hot Keys & Keyboard Commands