Online Zoom Discussion Activities for Social Connection and Learning
- Casey Laird
- Jun 24
- 4 min read
Have you ever asked your students a question, only to be met with a long awkward silence? Fostering deep discussions can be a real challenge in an online class! Luckily, you can structure your discussions to draw out more student engagement and deeper social learning connections in class.
Why are students quiet?
Low willingness to communicate can come from general shyness, lack of confidence in ideas or opinions, lack of confidence in language skills or the general dislocation of the online Zoom classroom. Speaking up can feel like drawing attention and criticism your way. Similarly, some students may not be able to answer on the spot and work better with a few minutes to gather their thoughts. If English is a second language, sometimes by the time a student has formulated their contribution, internally checked it and prepared themselves to speak, the topic has already moved on.
Strategies for fostering engagement
Lowering some of the social friction to participation can create easier ways for students to engage. A few strategies:
Time to prime: Build in thinking time to prime student thoughts. Before diving into a discussion, start with free writing, brainstorming or even just reflection.
Low barrier participation: Include low barrier opportunities like Zoom polls, Zoom chat, collaborative documents or whiteboard activities that get students writing and engaging with ideas without having to speak up.
Small group discussions: Put students in pairs or small groups. Fewer eyes can mean more comfort. Smaller groups can also create more social inclination to participate and not let down your classmates.
Seed and then feed: Start by giving students a chance to share their voices and build confidence in lower stakes or more intimate settings. Bring students back for whole class discussions and feedback. Ask them to share what they already mentioned and talked about or highlight interesting contributions and ask students to expand.
Take a look at a few sample activities to foster discussion in the online Zoom classroom.
Zoom Chat Waterfall Discussion Pose a question to the class and ask them to answer it in text in the Zoom chat. Tell them all to hold off on pressing Enter until you tell them. Once everyone has had a chance to write, give the class the cue to press Enter, and the Zoom chat will fill with everyone’s responses at once. Give a few minutes to read through, and highlight any responses of particular interest and call on students to expand.
Brainstorm then Discuss
Set up a Zoom Whiteboard with stick notes for brainstorming. Pose a few questions to the class and ask them to populate the sticky notes with thoughts, ideas, responses or questions. Give a few minutes for the Whiteboard to fill up. Then highlight contributions of particular interest and ask students to expand or respond together as a whole class.
Think Pair Share
This is a classic discussion activity (NYU login required) adapted for Zoom. Start off with a discussion question for the class. Ask students to take several minutes to think about it with no pressure to share. Suggest free writing or even include a shared Google Doc for freewriting. Next, put students in pairs in breakout rooms to discuss the questions and what they wrote or thought about. Pairs are a great way to put subtle social pressure on speakers while also creating a more intimate and low stakes conversation. Bring all students back to the main Zoom room and have each group share what they spoke about.
Round Robin Discussions
Inform students they will discuss a topic/question in small groups of three or four in breakout rooms. But before having a group discussion, each group member must take a full minute to share their thoughts. Once everyone has had their minute, give groups a few extra minutes to discuss further. Pop into breakout rooms to check progress. Bring all everyone back to the main Zoom room and highlight any interesting things you heard. Call on students to share what they said and what they heard from their classmates.
Create a Google Doc with three columns and enough rows for all the students in the class. Pose one question in Column 1 and direct each student to choose a row and write in a cell in Column 1 answering the question. Then, pose a question in Column 2 that builds on the previous question. Ask students to choose a new cell in Column 2 and answer that question in response to whoever wrote in the same row in Column 1. Lastly, pose a third question in Column 3 that builds on the previous two. Again, ask students to choose a cell in Column 3 in a row they haven’t written in and answer that question in response to the previous writer in Column 2. At the end, each student should have written once in each column. Their original answer in Column 1 should have two corresponding answers from different students in Column 2 and Column 3. Give students a change to read what others wrote, then call on students to speak on what they wrote in a whole class discussion.