Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down! Zoom Reactions Have Changed

Zoom … it’s always changing!

You may have noticed some recent changes to how Zoom Reactions work, specifically that they are easier to find and the experience is more consistent. The Reactions button is now at the bottom of the screen for everyone, and everyone, regardless of their role in the meeting has the same choices: the emojis for Applause, Thumbs up, Heart, Joy, Open Mouth and Tada, plus Yes, No, Slower, Faster and Raise Hand.

Some Reactions that used to be available are now gone. Some Hosts are disappointed by the loss of the Thumbs Down emoji, as it offered a simple way to get feedback to a question like “Is this okay?” or “Do you understand?”

Now that the Zoom emojis are all positive in nature, it’s more complicated to use them for a dichotomous response. There are however, alternatives to the Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down emojis. 

The simplest solution is to use the Yes and No responses to get feedback. Unfortunately, that requires the intrusion of English in a second language class, and some find it too direct. 

Another option is to create a poll that you prepare in advance and launch and relaunch as necessary. The simple responses to a single question poll could be Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down or Yes / No in the target language. 

The poll feature is also useful for quick questions with more than two options. For example, it could be used to quickly quiz students on the gender or case of nouns. The instructor could say a word such as "apple" and students would choose the appropriate gender - Masculine, Feminine or Neuter.

If you’re just using the poll to get a general Audience reaction, plan to quickly report the results verbally, and you do not need to save responses, you can relaunch that same simple poll over and over again in the meeting. After you administer a poll, instead of sharing the results, you can relaunch it. This will clear the older results, but if you’re just trying to get a sense of how your audience is feeling at a moment in time, there probably is no need to keep the results.

A reminder that Co-hosts can launch existing polls, but cannot answer poll questions, so if your meeting includes Co-hosts, and you want to include their responses, the Reaction button is a better choice than a poll.