First steps with Zoom
A view things to bear in mind when starting with Zoom:
Always conduct video conferences through the Zoom Desktop Application. And make sure your Desktop Application is updated!
To manage your account settings, your profile and to prepare polls or breakouts prior to your sessions, access the web portal ieuniversity.zoom.us. You need to go to the class link and click "edit" so that you can make the corresponding changes.
In your account, you can simply schedule a meeting or enter "new meeting" through the app, and you have created a space to practice.
In Zoom, all materials are shared through screen sharing. There is no such thing as uploading materials to the website.
Depending on the program you are teaching in, the waiting room feature (which allows to control access) might be activated. In this case, participants are first sent to a waiting room. From the waiting room, participants need to be admitted into the session.
Your account not only provides a "classroom" for your scheduled sessions, but you can also use it for office hours, student feedback conversations, project coaching and the like.
- The menu bar
Lets have a quick look at the basic functionalities on your menu. Please note that these may vary slightly, depending on the account type you have. The below example is a visual of the menu bar for faculty.
2. Audio
When you enter a meeting, by default, your microphone will be active. You have the option to mute yourself.
Clicking right next to the microphone icon opens a menu where you can find the option to run an audio and microphone test.
Important - make sure to run an audio test prior to starting your class.
3. VIDEO
When you enter a meeting, by default, your camera will be active. You have the option to switch off the video.
For your students as well, the default setting is that the camera is switched on.
Clicking right next to the camera icon opens a menu where you can find options to configure your video.
HD definition video is great for top video quality but be aware that this "eats up" connection speed.
The same is true for maximizing the gallery view to 49 video streams. This puts a lot of strain on bandwidth of your connection and processing power of your computer.
4. Security
In the screenshot to the right you can see the predetermined security settings. However, it is important that you understand the different items.
Bloc the meeting: In case you want to "close the door" for students that are late, you can block the meeting. Bear in mind, if a students connection drops, she will not be able to reconnect.
Enable/Disable waiting room: Here you can disable the waiting room after the meeting started. This way you have the initial control function but then don't have to be attentive to students joining late and being left in the waiting room.
Suppress profile pictures: You can suppress profile pictures in case you feel that inadequate content is being displayed.
Share screen: By default, participants are allowed to share their screen. You can disable this feature if you wish.
Chat: here you can disable the chat function.
Reactivate the microphone: Remember, as host of the session, you can mute any participant at any time. This is thought to cut down on background noise if a participant leaves their mic open after they contributed. By default, students can reactivate their microphone at a later point to participate in the discussion. You can suppress the reopening of the mic here.
Start video: Zoom meetings are designed to be interactive, normally, video participation is desired. However, in specific circumstances you might wish to disable this feature.
Suspend participants activity: This is the "emergency button" to suspend all activity of a participant. This is useful in case someone disturbs the class or share inappropriate contents.
5. Participants List
By clicking on the participants icon the list of attendees opens at the right of your screen.
Important functionalities at the bottom of the participants list:
Mute all - to avoid background noises. Students can re-open the microphone to talk.
Menu - optional configuration
Invite - you can send an invite to contacts or by email.
The names in the list of participants appear in the following order:
You
Host (if you are not host)
Phone numbers without name
Unmuted participants (alphabetically)
Muted participants (alphabetically)
6. Waiting Room
Depending on the program you are teaching in, the waiting room feature might be activated to control access.
Above the list of participants you can see the waiting room, when this feature is enabled.
4. Here you have a quick indication about how many people you have in the waiting room.
5. Admit all people in the waiting room at once
6. Admit people one by one, place the mouse over each name and select "admit" from the menu that appears.
7. Student Controls
Students have a slightly different control menu at the bottom of the participants list. They have a button to raise hand and to unmute themselves.
8. Polls
Clicking on polls opens up a pop-up window to either deploy polls you have prepared or create a poll during the session.
Polls are saved for a specific meeting on the web portal. You can create up to 25 polls with multiple questions per meeting.
During the session, you can see absolute numbers and percentages of the responses. You can not see who voted what until you create the poll report.
You can chose to share results with participants or to reopen the poll.
Upon completion of the session you can download a poll report form your Zoom web portal.
For detailed instructions, please go to Polls.
9. Chat
When you click on the chat icon, the chat box opens up. You can chat with the whole group or through private chats. You can also move the chat window to a different place on your screen.
10. Pause/Stop recording
By default, all sessions will be recorded upon start of the meeting. However, you can pause and stop the recording at any time during the meeting.
11. About meeting recordings
All meetings are recorded automatically, though you can pause and stop the recording.
It is a could recording. Local recording on your personal computer is not possible.
Once the cloud recording has finished, you (as well as people you provided with scheduling privileges or alternative hosts for a particular meeting) will receive an email notification that your recording is ready, including the link to the recording and the password. In addition to that, you can find all that information on the web portal, in the Recordings section.
You can share the recording through a link which password protected. This is set by default. The password is generated automatically.
Neither you nor anybody you are sharing the recording with can download the recording to their personal devices.
12. Break out rooms
Clicking on break out rooms triggers a pop-up window where you can select settings for break outs. For more information, click here.
13. Reactions
Here you and your student have some emoticons available.
Reactions are displayed on the video feed and will automatically disappear after 5 sec. For you to do a quick check it, switch to gallery view to see all students reactions at one glance!
Note: If a host or participant is below version 5.2.0, they will only be able to send/receive the clapping hands and thumbs up reactions. Make sure to update your Zoom application!
14. Finish the meeting
When you exit the meeting, you are asked if you want to finish the meeting for everybody. If you have to set-out but want other to continue, you can always appoint a co-host, who keeps the meeting going. However, if you have another meeting scheduled with your account, you have to close one to open a new one. The underlying assumption is that you can not be in two meetings at the same time.