Jason Lloyd from Culinary Arts invites Chef Gordon Ramsay to virtually join the weekly department meeting.

Have you found the change background feature in Zoom ?

Experiences from the virtual kitchen/classroom:

We have found that engaging students online via Zoom breakout rooms and presenting assignments has gone well this week.  Instructors found that being the only one speaking for any length of time was not too successful as some students would easily miss content or become distracted, so keeping them in a lesson by actively participating has been great (much like face to face). 

We originally thought asynchronous learning would be beneficial to students as they may have different schedules, but almost the entire program has been participating in live Zoom sessions and have really enjoyed the interaction with others! 

We have also encouraged instructors to sit in on sessions to learn from their peers, and I have helped out on several sessions as “TechChef” to monitor chats and any attend to any technical difficulties. 

As far as bandwidth goes, we have been good with most classes so far, with only one report of dropped connections.  We have also found that being able to see the students on their screen, rather than a black screen has helped instructors to feel like they are still teaching face to face, so we have been encouraging, but not enforcing students to activate their cameras.