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Using Zoom Chat

Used effectively, Zoom Chat can increase student interaction and participation and engagement during a class meeting.

As the meeting host, you can choose how Chat is used, including who participants can chat with. 

If needed, Chat can be disabled in the middle of a meeting.

Zoom control bar with Chat icon highlighted.

Ways to use Chat in a class meeting:

  • Engage students with a fun beginning-of-class opening question as an icebreaker.
  • Encourage meeting participants to ask and answer questions through chat to address issues without interrupting speakers during the meeting.
  • Allow participants to send individual messages to each other to privately clarify information they may have missed or misunderstood.
  • Share links to relevant documents or resources that are relevant to the meeting.
  • Pose questions for students to answer in Chat.

Turn on Chat in your Zoom settings

By default, Zoom Meeting Chat is turned OFF for new accounts. We recommend that you turn Meeting Chat ON in the Zoom web portal so that this option is available across your meetings.

Zoom settings highlighting Meeting Chat setting tab.

Manage Chat access during a meeting

Zoom Chat management tab.

In a meeting, meeting hosts can update Chat settings to select whom a Participant can chat with.

By default, when Chat is turned "ON," participants are allowed to send private messages to other people in the meeting. This setting can set across all of your meetings through your Zoom web portal settings, but can also be customized during an individual meeting. 

To change Chat permissions during a meeting, select the 3-dot ellipses icon on right side of chat box and select:

  • No One: Disables in-meeting chat for everyone.
  • Host and co-hosts: allows participants to send private messages to hosts and co-hosts.
  • Everyone: allows participants to send messages to all participants in the meeting simultaneously.
  • Everyone and anyone directly: allows participants to send messages to all participants in the meeting or to select any individual participant to send them a private message.

These permissions can also be managed through your Zoom web portal Chat Settings.

Use Chat to promote in-class engagement

Chat waterfall

Five waterfalls landing in a pool in a forested landscape. This is a fun way to engage your full course at the same time:  Use the "Ready, set, go," technique to create a "waterfall" of simultaneous responses.

  1. Pose a question, and ask your class to write their answer in the Chat window.
  2. Remind them NOT to send their chat response until you say: Go! This gives everyone time to compose their thoughts and answer.
  3. After an appropriate amount of time, give a countdown for students to hit Send at the same time  "3-2-1: Go!"  The result will be a quick cascade of different responses from across your class. 

Good waterfall questions can typically be answered in a sentence or less and don't have "wrong" answers. These types of questions result in a collection of responses that you and your students can easily skim while highlighting a range of different perspectives on the same topic.

Image credit: By Jeffrey Workman via WikiMedia Commons Links to an external site.

Jeopardy questions

Jeopardy! TV game logo. Ask students to pause and reflect for a minute or two (on that day's lecture, an assignment, the course direction, etc.) and then type into Chat a "thorny" question about something you could explain again, or add more clarity.

Directions:  Ask students to send you a direct (DM) Chat message. This makes it more comfortable for people to share their question. 

Then you discuss/answer several of the prominent questions so everyone benefits from your response. 

(Play the Jeopardy theme song during the reflection, if you wish.)

Guide from Zoom: Chatting in a Zoom meeting Links to an external site.