American video teleconferencing software company Zoom has added a new feature named ‘Focus Mode’ to help teachers reduce distractions for students.

COVID-19 pandemic has indeed narrowed down the communication options and one of such is the teacher-student communication mode. There wouldn’t be any student or teacher who has not used the Zoom app for the new trend of ‘online classes’ or ‘online meeting’. And, there wouldn’t be any of them who has not faced any distraction or technical issue during the same.

Hence, to make things easier for teachers, Zoom has added the ‘Focus Mode’ feature. According to ANI, Zoom said that the feature is meant to keep students from getting distracted while they are in a virtual classroom.

In a blog post, the company wrote, “Focus Mode allows educators to see their students’ videos, and students to see their teachers without seeing other class participants. With this feature, teachers can supervise their class, but students won’t be distracted by their peers’ video feeds or feel self-conscious about turning on their camera.”

Dwelling on how it will be used, the blogspot said when a user will turn on the ‘Focus Mode’ option, the participants attending the meeting will not be able to see other participant’s videos or screen shares and access to those screen shares will be limited to the user alone.

The feature offers similar controls to that of the ‘Webinar Mode’. However, Webinar mode does not come with the free account and provides less flexibility when compared to normal Zoom meetings.

As per ANI, Zoom will allow hosts to turn focus mode on and off “at-will”, which can help them to use the feature for specific use cases.