Zoom’s new features enhance virtual classroom, audio output

The video-conferencing app’s features are said to help musicians, students and teachers, along with deaf and hard-of-hearing users.

Teachers can spotlight up to nine participants in a meeting, to facilitate a focused group view and group presentations.

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Zoom rolled out a new high-fidelity music mode, designed to provide professional-grade audio to help users shut out background noises and tune up their audio.

The feature will enhance original audio, eliminate compression, and raise output quality, Zoom said in a statement.

This is said to benefit users taking virtual music or song-writing sessions, live performances, and dance and fitness classes.

The company also claims that doctors can use this audio mode pick faint heartbeats and make clearer diagnosis via their digital stethoscopes.

The video conferencing app also added features to enhance the virtual classroom experience. The multi-pinning feature allows users to pin multiple videos after disabling speaker view. This is said to be helpful for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

Teachers can spotlight up to nine participants in a meeting, to facilitate a focused group view and group presentations.

Zoom has also added 'unmute with consent' feature so teachers can ask to unmute their students only once, and have that permission carried over into other classes. Teachers can now also prevent students from sharing their screens, renaming themselves, sending a chat to the whole class and unmuting themselves.