chat

Zoom Basics

Chat

The Chat feature in Zoom allows participants to send text messages to the whole group during Main Session meetings, and to their partners in Breakout Room sessions.

To make this feature available, it must be turned on in Settings prior to the class meeting. We recommend that you do so in a way that prevents students from saving the Chat interaction (in consideration of other students’ privacy), and also that you disable “private chat,” which would allow students to text-message each other without you in the loop during the class.

The setting should look like this:

To send messages during the class session:

Click on the Chat icon on the control bar in the Zoom window to open the Chat field, including the controls at the bottom:

To send a text message to everyone:

To send a text message privately to one student:

NB: Assuming you've disabled the "Private chat" feature in the Settings, only you as the host can send messages to individual participants.


To send images:


To send document files:


Resources

Two ESL instructors explain how they use Chat: [4:41]

Basic tutorial from the British Council: [1:29]