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Zoom has become the tool of choice to keep people connected, but a surprising trend that emerged is questionnaires.
Quizzes work very well in Zoom because they are social, with no need for people to yell at each other all the time. Essentially, it is a way to get a group of people together, participate in an activity, without having to take turns talking.
From business tools to cool quizzes, here are some tips on how to run the latest quiz from home.
Get ready
Every quiz teacher should start with a quiz and every quiz needs structure, and the most important parts of running a quiz happen offline, or rather, in planning.
Make a presentation
First of all you need your questions. As you’re going to run this on Zoom, instead of reading all your questions and wrestling with people who can’t hear, make a presentation.
It can be in PowerPoint, Keynote, Slides or anything else, and we think the Slides work really well, with the advantage of being free. The key here is to make a presentation that makes your quiz stand out, because everyone else will see it. As always practice, practice, practice, organize your transitions or effects, so you know what you are doing.
The advantage of using a presentation is that you can insert everything in that presentation: a round of images, quotes to complete, a round of music, whatever you want. Put it in “present” and / or full-screen mode, so those in the presentation can’t see the rest of your desktop.
Better advice– Place each question on a different slide, so you can easily click or go back if necessary.
Prepare your computer and network
It’s worth closing everything you don’t need, so skip and quit Skype, Word, Photoshop, anything that might be running in the background that you don’t really need as Zoom is a demanding app.
Since you will share your screen, all you want to open is what you really need to share, and the fewer programs you have open, the less Zoom will offer you when it comes to sharing.
Prepare your answers
An excellent way to facilitate your questionnaire is to use an answer sheet. Sure, people can just write answers on a piece of paper, but preparing an answer sheet means that people know where they are, how many questions to expect, and you can make the structure of your questionnaire a little more complicated, for example, with two-part answers. , photo rounds, etc.
Once you have created your questionnaire, put your answer sheet together and send it with the meeting invitation or details and people can print it at home.
Consider what everyone sees and hears
Remember that as a host, people are likely to watch and hear you more than any other participant, so think about what is in the background and what noise is around you.
Mute your phone to avoid those pesky bings and bongs, and don’t sit next to your fridge or washing machine on the spin cycle. Also, do not sit with your back to a patio window or door as it will be trimmed. A nice plain background is simple; A studious looking bookstore is very much in vogue right now, or you can choose a Zoom background.
Use the power of zoom
Zoom, as a tool for business first, has a collection of features that are useful when submitting your questionnaire, and the main one here is the ability to share your screen, so you can show that presentation and people can participate. professional.
Set up a Zoom meeting
Zoom meetings can be scheduled, or you can simply come in and start a meeting and have others join. For something organized like a questionnaire, it’s great to schedule it for the time you want it to take place, sharing the meeting ID and password by any means you like. If you schedule a meeting, that ID and passwords are on the scheduling page for you.
If a new meeting has started, you can find the details by clicking the “i” in the upper left corner and sharing, but be organized and schedule instead.
If you are scheduling, you can configure many of the meeting parameters in advance, including allowing people to enter before you (the host) are there. That is great for social events.
Dealing with that 40 minute time limit
Zoom has a 40-minute time limit for meetings, unless you pay the Pro tier ($ 14.99 / £ 11.99 / $ 13.99 a month). If you’re zooming in a lot, it’s worth paying for a few months until you get it back to the real world – you can cancel at any time.
But Zoom has also relaxed the rules around this 40-minute restriction a bit. You may be offered an opportunity to avoid the time limit if you schedule your next Zoom meeting, so it’s worth considering. If not, and if you don’t want to pay, be prepared to finish and restart in a timely manner. That also allows you to go to the bathroom and cool off, and you can always share multiple meeting IDs in advance.
Share your presentation and you’re done
Once you’re up and running with your meeting, you should share your presentation. This is really easy and something Zoom is really good at making it perfect for quizzes. Simply press the large Share Screen button on the Zoom toolbar and select what you want to share: your presentation.
You will want the app to be in current mode, so that it fills the screen and does not show your desktop background, shortcuts, and everything in between.
When you enter the screen sharing option, you will find some advanced settings including the option to limit screen sharing only to you, the host. You will need to check this option, so that no one else can interrupt things and start presenting something else from the end.
Turn off annotations
Zoom allows annotations by default, allowing participants to add annotations to screens that are shared. This means that anyone in your questionnaire can go to your presentation, but you can deactivate it.
Unfortunately, these are in the advanced options of your Zoom account accessed through the Zoom web portal. If you open the preferences for the Zoom application, you can access them by going to the profile and then “see advanced features”. This opens your account’s web page, and on that page you will find “annotations” with the option to disable access for participants.
Use the power of silence
Once your questionnaire is up and running, you’ll need to keep control of the mob. People will probably be silenced if they want to discuss as a team, but they will also have the power as host to silence the entire questionnaire. You will find this option in the participants in the toolbar, where you can mute and activate the silence of everyone. There is an option for people to disable, which you can also disable if you want.
Importantly, mute will mean that people can hear what you’re saying. If you have to explain the rules of a round or give any advice, definitely silence the mob, and you will also want to silence everything for the music round, if you have one.
But don’t keep things quiet all the time, as this will dampen the social sentiment of the quiz: People will still want to talk, laugh, and interact. By using a presentation, people can read the questions on their own, so a little noise won’t ruin things.
Welcome to the music round!
Having a round of music is a great questionnaire and there is nothing stopping you from doing it also through Zoom. There is a range of options for using music, basically an easy way and a more complicated way.
The easy way to share music on Zoom
The simplest thing is to use the microphone of your computer to reproduce it with those who are in your test.
You can even play this from your computer (from Spotify or wherever) because once you’re sharing your presentation in full screen, those who “see” in the meeting will still see it when you walk away, because Zoom stops screen sharing. You even go back to that application.
So you can switch to Spotify and play those tracks from a pre-assembled playlist, knowing that the quiz takers aren’t looking at your screen, they’re still looking at your presentation.
If you don’t want to, you can always play music from another device, like your phone, directly into your computer’s microphone.
The downside to doing this is that it will depend on your microphone and that means the quality will not always be as good.
The most complicated way to share music in Zoom
Zoom has a “share computer sound” option. This is really designed so that if you are sharing music or video, it comes directly from your computer instead of your microphone.
If you want to integrate this into your own questionnaire, it is quite easy to do. If you have audio (or video) embedded in your presentation, you can do this:
- Press the “share screen” option on the Zoom toolbar.
- Click the “share computer sound” option, but stick with the same presentation file you are using.
- Then “share screen” and then play your music.
That will share the music directly from your presentation to viewers and will sound much better than using your microphone. Remember to hide the music icon when giving the presentation, so it looks nice and clean.
This also works for video, which you can insert, play, and share, and there is an additional check box to optimize video for sharing.
While this is happening, your own microphone is still on, so you can still speak, if necessary. Once you are done with the music round, you can return to normal screen sharing. Zoom allows you to change these audio options during a call, if you want to enable and disable computer sound during testing.
However, different computer settings work in different ways, and some external speakers may stop playing audio, which means you can’t hear music. Some may have the option to monitor the audio separately, for example, through a set of headphones connected to their microphone, but definitely test if this works on your computer before trying to do it in a live test.
Share audio only in Zoom
There is a third option which is to share audio only. This means that you are not sharing your screen, so it effectively sets your presentation aside for the music round.
Since you are not sharing your screen, you can switch to your music source (like the Spotify app for example) and play your playlist.
You can use this method in the following way:
- Press “share screen” (or “share new” if you already share your screen) on the Zoom toolbar.
- Select the “Advanced” tab.
- Choose “Music or Computer Sound Only”.
- Play your music.
This is a simple option to use because you know that you are not going to reveal the music source and do not have to embed it as part of your presentation.
As stated above, most people will probably find this works fine, but in some computer setups the speakers may stop playing so that you cannot hear the music. Again, test before doing this live.
If you are switching to a different style for music sharing, remember to return to your presentation after the music is done.
Revealing your winners
It’s easy to have your answers on the slides so you can quickly review them and have people mark their own sheets. Having them on display again means there is no confusion about what the answer really is.
This is also a good time to have all the microphones on so that everyone can enjoy the feeling of elation or disgust when you are wrong.
Finally, you need to know who won, and the easiest way to do this is to have everyone write their score on their sheet and hold it in front of their camera.
Don’t panic, it’s not the other way around!
When someone stops writing to the camera, in their own preview image the writing will be backwards for them, but it will be for everyone else. That has to do with the reflection of the camera, which makes it much easier to see what you are doing on the screen, because your preview video matches your own movements.
Duplication exists for your benefit and whatever writing you hold on the screen is only upside down in its preview – everyone else sees everything exactly as it should be.
The only way your writing will appear backwards is if you go and write it backwards. If this is too confusing, you can disable duplication in the video options.
Thanks to Laura for the inspiration for this article!
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