Zoom Video Communications has announced new features for students and teachers. These features span Zoom's Chat and Meeting offerings and are designed to support teachers who need to engage and manage students joining class remotely or submitting homework assignments.
Zoom's new features- Virtual background and blur are now available for Zoom for Chrome Progressive Web Application (PWA) users. The Breakout rooms has also received enhancements in this latest release. "Programme audio allows meeting hosts to share content with audio to breakout rooms, adding the ability to share videos with audio. With the LTI Pro integration enhancement, educators can populate breakout rooms from the course roster," Zoho release mentioned.
The features like Anywhere Polls will make it easier for instructors to reuse polls and will also be beneficial for grading. This feature will be available this year.
According to Zoom, the other features include sending audio and video messages into Zoom Chat, and the ability to rename participants in the waiting room. "Users can click video at the bottom of the chat client and record up to a 3-minute video message that goes directly into the out-of-meeting chat channel," it read.
“Delivering happiness to our customers is the core of what we do at Zoom,” said Johann Zimmern, Global Education Strategy Lead, Zoom. “We work closely with our global K-12 and higher education customers, taking their requests into account and involving them in feature development. As a direct result of this, Zoom developed these exciting new features for education," Mr. Zimmern said.