Zoom for Instructors Overview

Audience: Franklin University instructors looking to learn about Zoom for meet sessions in the classroom. The instructions for scheduling meetings are specific to BlueQuill. 

• This article focuses on Zoom and BlueQuill. However, if you are teaching a course in Canvas and wish to learn more about Canvas and BlueQuill, please click here. 

In this article:

1. Zoom Overview and Key Features
2. Getting Started
3. Scheduling/Setting up a Meet Session
4. Hosting a Meet Session/Office Hours
5. Recording/Sharing a Meet Session
6. Holding Meetings with External Users

Zoom Overview and Key Features

Zoom is the new meet tool that will be replacing Adobe Connect starting in the Summer of 2019. While Zoom is integrated into BlueQuill much like Adobe Connect was, there are some major differences to learn about. The biggest difference is that Zoom offers a browser experience and a desktop app experience as well. Instructors are highly encouraged to download the desktop app, as the app offers additional features.

Zoom includes many useful features similar to Adobe Connect, as well as new features that will enhance the Meet experience in your courses:

• Web, mobile, and desktop client accessibility
• Whiteboard feature for interactive presentations
• Desktop sharing
• Attendee joining before host
• Creation of separate meetings
• Breakout rooms
• Improved video quality
• View recorded sessions on mobile
• Document sharing

To get started, feel free to read through this document and view our overview video as well:

If you are unable to find the information you need below, feel free to search Zoom's official support site for more training materials at: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us

Getting Started

To get started setting up your account in Zoom:

• This article focuses on Zoom and BlueQuill. However, if you are teaching a course in Canvas and wish to learn more about Canvas and BlueQuill, please click here. 

1. Navigate to the course object that contains a meet session (or go to the Apps menu -> Meet) and click on the Meet tool to open up Zoom in a new browser tab.
   
   
   
   
2. Opening this tab automatically creates an account with your username so that you can log back into Zoom at any time using your Franklin credentials.
3. The tab that opens up displays all of your meet sessions for this specific class. There are a few tabs to know about in this view:
   • Upcoming Meetings - Lists all meet sessions created for this specific course.
   • Previous Meetings - Lists all completed meetings as well as their recordings.
   • Personal Meeting Room - View and adjust the settings for your personal meeting space. Use this space to hold external meetings or office hours as needed.
   • Cloud Recordings - View/delete any meet session recordings you have stored in the cloud.
     
     
4. Now you are ready to move on to the next section on how to create a new meet session.

Scheduling/Setting up a Meet Session/Office Hours

To schedule a meet session:

1. Log into BlueQuill and click on the Meet icon within the Apps menu. Once the Meet From the Zoom browser window, click on "Schedule a New Meeting".
   • If you do not go through BlueQuill as detailed above to schedule a class meeting, it will not connect back to you course. 
     
2. This will bring up the settings menu for a new meet session, where you can set things like the meet time, dates, permissions, and more. View the setting descriptions below to find best practices and important tips. You can use these settings to create office hours as well.
   
   
   
   • TOPIC
     • Topics (or Meet titles) are automatically filled in to make sure all meet sessions follow a common naming convention. While the naming conventions should remain the same, you are welcome to add on to the title, just like how the title above has added "-WEEK1".
   • DESCRIPTION
     • Descriptions are a good way to help distinguish which meet session is which, but this field is optional.
   • WHEN/DURATION
     • Use this section to set the date and time of your meet session IF it's a one-time meeting that you don't need to record for students. You can also set the duration of your meet session, such as 15 minutes or 2 hours. See best practices for choosing meet times below.
   • TIMEZONE/DATE SETTINGS
     • If you are hosting meet sessions for students overseas or in other time zones, you can change the timezone to work for them or use your own.
     • Checking off Recurring meeting will open up more timing options, such as making the session recur every day, week, month, etc.
     • BEST PRACTICE: The best practice for creating meet sessions is to create a recurring session that happens at the same time every week. This is highly recommended because this method lets you record and share meet sessions with students.
     • IMPORTANT: If you set the Recurrence field to NoFixed Time, you can use that session at any time but the recordings will NOT be available to students.
   • REGISTRATION
     • This field should not be checked off for classroom meet sessions. This feature requires users to register with an email, name, and questions before joining the meet session. This can be used for personal meetings with external users.
   • VIDEO
     • This setting allows you to control whether or not Hosts and/or Students are allowed to show their webcam. If your class is team-taught, you may decide to turn off webcam usage for the second host.
   • AUDIO
     • This setting simply lets you choose between using a telephone or computer for audio. It is best to always check "Both" for simple audio management.
   • MEETINGS OPTIONS
     • There are a few meeting options you can set here. The default options have been chosen based off of what is considered best practice for the university.
     • The other settings are not recommended, as they may interrupt how a normal meet session should run.
     • IMPORTANT: The "Record the meeting automatically" option has been disabled for the entire University due to a lack of storage space. Even if you select this option, it will not turn on so do not use this option.
   • ALTERNATIVE HOSTS
     • If your class is team-taught, or you would like to have another host for any reason, you can include their email address here to give them hosting rights.
3. Use the settings above to create a Meet session that works for you and your class. See more instructions below on using these settings to create office hours.
4. Now that you have chosen your meet settings, you can click on "Save" to create the meeting.
5. You will see the meeting listed under the "Upcoming Meetings" tab, where you can then start the session or delete it as well. You can start this meeting before the scheduled date and time if you want to test out the meetings settings. The session will appear on this tab until the meeting time for the session has passed.
6. See instructions below on hosting a meet session.

To schedule office hours:

You can set up office hours in two ways. Either by using your PMI (a personal meeting space) or by creating a new session. The difference is that your PMI can only be accessed via a link (recommended for external users), while a created meet session can be accessed by students from within Zoom.

See Zoom's article here on how to use your PMI for a meeting:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/203276937-Using-Personal-Meeting-ID-PMI-

To create office hours as a meet session:

The process for creating office hours as a Meet session is the same as the process for creating a class meeting time as shown above. Just make sure you choose "NoFixed Time" under the recurring settings so that you can reuse this session for the whole term.

Hosting a Meet Session/Office Hours

After following the setup process described above, you can now start and host a meet session.

1. From the "Upcoming Meetings" tab, find the meet session you wish to host and click on "Start".
   
   
2. This will open up Zoom in another tab, where you will be prompted to download the Zoom Desktop app. It is highly recommended that instructors download the desktop app, as this is the only way to access certain features and settings.
3. Once you have opened up the meet session, you will have many different tools to learn about. See the video below from Zoom's official support site to learn more.
4. If you are wanting to host office hours, you can start your office meet session at any time by clicking "Start".

Video Tutorials for Basic Zoom Functionality

Recording/Sharing a Meet Session

Zoom offers users the option to record and save recordings either as a file on your computer or by saving it to the cloud online. See the video below for a brief overview of recording in Zoom. For a more detailed article on recording and sharing meet sessions with students, see our article Recording and Sharing Zoom Sessions.

Holding Meetings with External Users

If you would like to host a meeting on Zoom with an external user outside of the Franklin group of users, you can do this by sharing a link to a meeting and adjusting settings as needed. For a detailed walkthrough, view our article Holding External Meetings with Zoom.

Wish to log a request with the Help Desk? Use your Franklin University username and password to login: Log A Request