I took an online Zoom workshop a couple months ago where the facilitator had developed exercises where we first had a moment of self-reflection followed by breakout room group activities and finally a larger group discussion. I liked having a moment to reflect on my own before checking in with the group. I found that I had more confidence engaging with the larger group discussions because I had a moment to gather my own thoughts. This compares to my recent experiences with question and answer periods for academic Zoom talks. I think there is less engagement because the connection between the audience and the speaker can be lost due to the lack of embodied connection. Moving forward, I will try to build varied self-reflection and group exercises into my class discussions before breaking into large class discussions.
