Four courses just started with Zoom…

Tric Topsfield  The Pleasure of Reading

Our group has met twice using Zoom. The first time with only four parti­cipants went very well in terms of clear commu­nic­a­tion and good quality of sound. The small number obviously demands that each parti­cipant needs to be well prepared to contribute to the discus­sion in order for the meeting to proceed smoothly.

The second time with eleven parti­cipants provided more of a challenge with echoing causing diffi­culty with hearing for me as a hearing aid wearer but that seemed to vary with each person. I suspect I had the most diffi­culty and even so I managed well enough to enjoy the exper­i­ence. Feedback from members having their first Reading for Pleasure on Zoom was that the meeting went well. Conversation was engaging with every parti­cipant contributing.

A further challenge is accessing scheduled books with restricted library services  so the order of books has had to be altered to meet this challenge. Meetings with Zoom will continue until we can all rejoice in seeing each other in actuality rather than on screen.

PS  A plus for me has been learning how to use a new IT commu­nic­a­tion skill which I may need to use in the future.

Renate Tonks German Advanced Conversation

Dace Darzins is the Tutor and I manage the class on Zoom. We have a Pro licence paid for by u3a so we can go for longer than the standard 40 min.

Unfortunately the group is quite small, maximum so far have been 8 parti­cipants, but this makes the group quite manage­able.  If the group were any larger I think we might struggle to have spon­tan­eous conversations.

Each week we agree on a topic and each person has an oppor­tunity to express them­selves, which generates questions from the other parti­cipants.  We have found that a relaxed conver­sa­tional style session, as compared to a formal present­a­tion followed by discus­sion, works best when using Zoom.  Once everyone got used to giving one person at a time the floor and not inter­rupting the sessions now flow very smoothly.

I don’t believe that we need the white­board in Zoom as most people are taking their own notes and asking if they don’t under­stand something, whereby Dace will explain the meaning and spelling of words. 

Kay Bennetts Free to Air Film Club

We have just had our first session and it went very well indeed. The film was chosen from the enormous number available on SBS On Demand.

There were eight parti­cipants who engaged in lively discus­sion. Everyone felt that seeing each other all the time was very important in this time of social distan­cing, and that 8 was the perfect number to enable a natural relaxed conversation.

Everyone is keen to continue and was impressed with how easy it is to have a conver­sa­tion in this manner. People like the fact that you can see everyone in the group all the time. 

[Enrolments are still open for this group and for a number of the other new online courses.]

John Travers Book Club

I recently lead a book club discus­sion of twelve in Zoom and we asked each person to hold their hand up if they wanted to speak. This worked very well, better than a regular discus­sion, because we were all looking at each other and could see if someone had their hand up. The Chair simply said a name, and on the conver­sa­tion went. It was a more orderly conver­sa­tion than usual and more personal, surprisingly.