Many students around the world are dependent on online classes amidst the Coronavirus pandemic as schools and colleges have been closed for quite a while now. And this has been a great opportunity for Video call apps like Zoom to expand their user base.
In a recent blog post, Zoom announced quite a bunch of new features that will further enhance the user experience.
Let’s take a look at them.
Gallery View Customization
Currently, there’s a feature in Zoom that the video of the person shows up on your display as soon as he/she starts speaking, and switches to other one when they start speaking.
Now, Zoom will provide the option to drag-and-drop the windows in which the video of the person can be seen, and also a locking feature that will lock the layout which you have customized. Meaning that the video won’t shift from one person to another when they speak.
Multi-pinning
Multi pinning can be used by any person to PIN upto 9 participants of a video call in their own personal view. The blog post read: “This is particularly helpful for teachers and students that use American Sign Language because it does not automatically trigger the speaker to appear in the speaker view. Students who are deaf or hard of hearing can pin both teacher and interpreter on the screen for a more accessible learning experience”.
Multi-spotlight
This feature can be used by teachers to spotlight upto 9 students in the video call who will be visible to all the participants of the class.
Unmute with consent
This feature will give the teacher the ability to unmute the students who cannot unmute themselves for some reason. But for the sake of privacy, every student in the class and the teacher will have to opt-in to this ‘audio control’ before the video call starts. This opt-in will only be a one-time thing.
The students can revoke this permission later on if they don’t want to get unmuted by the host.
Some more features like an improved audio mode where there will be less compression of audio, a breakout room, etc are also lined up for launch.
Zoom predicts to add all these features in the next 2 months.