I may end up deleting this post as it is too early to tell for sure, but it could be that direct eye-contact and visual cues are unnecessary for a large undergrad class on Zoom; because the students are bored, i.e. listless and depressed. I spent a lot of time using the Whiteboard function on the share-screen to organize the flow of the lecture into byte size units.
The effect was [1] a lot of talking while also writing/typing on the WB (actually more like writing while talking!) with [2] an intentional pause between units, and [3] soliciting feedback via chat (more writing) (and then talk). The writing while lecturing seemed to satisfy the machine-like learning of remote learning. The Whiteboard, I’m hoping provided the students the visual information with which to organize the data (i.e. course content).
The trick is to move across and between screens.
sounds like a reasonable move to make, would be good if you could get more detailed feedback from a couple of students across the spectrum, too much to hope for probably in any broad/systematic way but would be lovely if this became a chance for faculty to also question the effectiveness of more traditional forms of lecturing. good luck.