There are numerous web conferencing programs to choose from, but your Alumni Relations team will be best equipped to assist with Zoom. It’s important that club volunteers familiarize themselves with their chosen web platform to ensure that your virtual events run smoothly and securely.
Getting Started
To get started with your free account, visit zoom.us and click the blue Sign Up button, enter your email address and click Sign Up. Zoom will send you a confirmation email. Open the email and click Activate Account. Once activated you can fill out the rest of your account details. Please note that volunteers should discuss whether the free or paid version of Zoom is best for their community.
The Role of the Host
The meeting host has the most technical control and manages the settings for the meeting itself and for all of the participants. Ideally, the host should not be the speaker or panelists so that they’re allowed to present without the responsibility of managing and troubleshooting event settings. The host can designate other colleagues as co-hosts, which is beneficial for helping to manage various settings.
Hosting an Event
When scheduling your meeting, be sure to go into the Meeting Settings. You will need to use either the Zoom app on your computer/mobile device or the web portal in order to see these settings. In the app, you may have to click “see more settings” which will take you to the web portal where Advanced Settings can be accessed. The following settings will help you manage your meeting smoothly.
Choose mute on entry. This option will make sure that all attendees are automatically muted when entering the event. If you do not select this option, the host will have the ability to mute guests individually during the event if needed. If guests are manually muted mid-event by the host, the attendees will need to request permission to unmute themselves.
To keep guests on mute for a portion or the entirety of the event - after entering your event as the host, go to the Manage Participants menu (found under the host controls) and make sure the option to Allow Participants to Unmute Themselves is not selected. You can reverse this at any time. For example, you can unmute all guests after the speaker’s presentation for the Q&A portion of the event.
Unless you want your attendees to participate in the presentation by sharing content, make sure that screen sharing, annotation, and whiteboard sharing are all blocked for attendees. This can be set within the Meeting Settings or during the event by clicking on the Security icon in the host toolbar.
If you want your presenter to be able to share their screen/presentation, you will need to designate that person(s) as a co-host so that they can share their slides.
Determine whether attendees join with video. For smaller events, you may want all of your guests to be able to see one another. Video sharing can help enhance the sense of community, and make the event more dynamic. If you do not want guests joining with video (a recommendation for larger events), select that participant video is “off” when setting up the meeting. If after joining, a guest has turned theirs on, the host(s) can turn it off manually by opening the Manage Participants drop-down menu.
Choose to enable the waiting room. This option will allow attendees to join the meeting, but will put them in a virtual holding room until you and your speakers are ready to go. This feature can help create a more coordinated and polished start to the event. It also allows you to pre-screen the names of attendees to guard against allowing zoom-bombers (random people who join meetings and share inappropriate content) in. This can be set up ahead of time in Meeting Settings or during the event via the Security icon in the host toolbar, which either can move current guests into a waiting room or keep incoming guests there.
Letting people in from the waiting room is a manual process. Host(s) must click on each name individually to allow entry. Although this can happen relatively quickly, you will still need to factor in a couple of minutes for this process, and it may not be practical for very large events.
Consider securing your meeting with a password that you share with your attendees prior to the event. This is an easy way to protect your event from Zoom-bombing. If you run the event registration through BRAVO, you can easily email all registered guests with the URL and password information.
Another security measure to consider is locking the meeting once everyone has arrived to prevent others from joining. This might be a practical approach for small events where you know exactly how many people you are expecting. You can access this feature via the Security icon in the host toolbar.
Keep in mind that if someone was running late or got disconnected mid-event, they will be unable to join the event once the room is locked.
If you have a guest who needs to be removed from an event, you can do so as the host by opening the Manage Participants drop-down menu in the host controls via the Security icon in the host toolbar. Anyone removed by the host is immediately blocked from rejoining.
We strongly encourage everyone to consult security instructions from Zoom support to learn about safeguarding against uninvited guests.
Setting the Right Tone
Ask your speakers/panelists to arrive 15 minutes before the event. This will give you time to go over any final details and allow you to test their sound a video as well as any slides they may be showing. If you’re using the waiting room function, you will need to manually let them enter the meeting. Similarly, if your meeting settings have been set to mute participants upon entry, disable screen sharing or video - don’t forget to give your presenters back their permissions. You can do this in the Manage Participants section.
You may want to consider sharing a static slide with a logo visible (via sharing the host’s screen) right before you anticipate guests entering to help set a professional first impression.
When it’s time to start, the facilitator of the event (either the host or another key participant or speaker) should welcome guests, introduce the speaker, and share any important logistics or notes, such as how the guests should be in contact to ask questions, report an issue, etc.
Make it Interactive
Make time for audience Q&A. Questions can be submitted in advance or during the event, and there are a number of ways to handle facilitating this.
Ask participants to submit questions ahead of time either via email or a Google Form. This option allows the submitter some degree of anonymity and it gives you the ability to pre-screen questions.
For any of the following options, the host should plan to have a couple of questions prepared ahead of time to lead with in case it takes a few minutes for the audience to warm up and start asking questions.
For very small events, you can unmute attendees and allow them to ask questions themselves. Be aware that this strategy can easily create a situation where everyone is attempting to talk at the same time, so we advise that you instruct attendees to physically raise their hands on their videos and have the host call on one person at a time.
You can ask attendees to virtually “raise their hand” to ask questions and unmute/re-mute them individually to ask their questions. Hosts need to enable non-verbal feedback in Meeting Settings. Once that setting is enabled, attendees can click on the Participants icon at the bottom of the screen. This will show the feedback icons including Raise Hand/Lower Hand. The host can also click the Participants icon to review nonverbal feedback and see who has raised their hand.
Have people type questions in the chat function. This is a very easy and accessible option to employ. You may want to instruct guests to privately chat the questions directly to the host or the speaker. Keep in mind that guests who call in will not be able to see or utilize the chat feature.
Show an email address on a slide at the beginning of the event and ask participants to email their questions to that address. A volunteer can monitor the address and curate the questions into a shared Google Doc or private chats to the host and speaker.
Slides are a great way to enhance the speaker’s presentation. Make sure that you and your speakers test all slides prior to the event start and be sure to click share computer audio (an option that shows when you click “share screen”) if you’re showing any video or audio files.
Polls are another way to add an interactive element to your Zoom event. The polling feature allows you to create single or multiple-choice questions. You can launch the poll during your event and gather the responses in real-time. You also have the ability to download a report of polling after the meeting. Polls can be conducted anonymously if you do not wish to collect participant information with the poll results.
If you’re using any of these interactive features, encourage attendees to join by computer instead of the phone so that they don’t miss out on key contact.
Record It!
If your speakers are amenable to it, recording your event is a great idea. Since there will undoubtedly be alumni who can’t tune in for the live event, sharing a recording of the event at a later date will allow them to catch the content.
More Questions?
Visit the Zoom Help Center for lots of great content.
Reach out to your Alumni Relations contact.