Zoom FAQs for Faculty

Adobe Connect's meeting system gave each classroom one, stand-alone room to use over and over, which meant that instructors never had to create a meeting. Zoom, however, allows each classroom to have multiple meetings within a course, but they must first be created by the instructor.

Meet sessions are accessed in the same way as they were before with Adobe Connect. You can find your meetings either by going into Apps -> Meet or by clicking the Meet button within a learning object that has the Meet tool turned on. For instructions on creating a new meeting, view our video below:

This depends on how your meet times are set up and how you prefer to share recordings

If your class's meet sessions repeat at the same time on the same day, then you can create one meeting that repeats every day, week, or month. This method makes sharing cloud recordings to students automatic and easy to manage.

If your meet sessions occur at random times on random days, then it is best to make a new meeting for every meet session. This method allows instructors to automatically share cloud recordings with students versus the final option:

• If you want to have one, static meeting that repeats forever and can be joined at any time, this can be done by setting a meeting's reoccurring option to "No Fixed Time". This method is not recommended, though, because cloud recordings will have to be manually shared to students since the meeting never moves over to the "Previous Meetings" tab (where students find recordings).

Like with Adobe Connect, Zoom meetings are integrated into BlueQuill learning objects. So, if you have a meeting object scheduled for students, they will open the meet tool like normal and find the meeting associated with today's date.

It is highly recommended that you create all of your meet sessions before your course starts, because if students open the meet tool early, they may think there are no meet sessions scheduled.

Yes. While the browser version of Zoom does work, there are many features that are unavailable in this version. By downloading the desktop application, students and instructors gain tons of features, such as sharing files in chat, creating greenscreen backgrounds, breakout sessions, and tons of meet settings.

Yes, you can. When you are first creating a meeting (or if you edit an existing meeting's settings) you will see a text field titled "Alternative Hosts." In this field, type in the email address of the user that you want to give hosting rights to. Make sure you use their faculty email address, or they won't be given the correct permissions.

It's also important to note that if there are two or more instructors in a course, whichever instructor creates a meeting then owns that meeting and will be the only one who can edit the meeting. So, make sure you add the other instructor as an alternative host to your meetings since they cannot add themselves.

Once you start a meeting, simply click on the Record button at the bottom of the Zoom window. You may need to hover your mouse over the menu to get it to show up. After clicking record, choose either to record to your computer or to the cloud:

IMPORTANT: When creating a new meeting, you will have the choice to check off "record meeting automatically". This option has been disabled and will not work due to the university having limited cloud storage.

For a video walkthrough, view Zoom's video Recording a Zoom Meeting.

After a meeting is finished, if you recorded the meeting to the cloud, then you will receive an email when the recording has finished uploading to the Zoom website. Once the recording is uploaded, students can access previous recordings through the Meet tool, under the "Previous Recordings" tab. Instructors can access the recordings from the "Cloud Recordings" tab or from their account on https://franklin.zoom.us.

Find more information on sharing recordings in our article Recording and Sharing Zoom Sessions.

Yes!

If you saved your recording to your computer, then you can share the recording file to others by attaching it to an email, uploading it somewhere online (such as a discussion post in BlueQuill), or you can even store it in a shared space, such as OneDrive.

If you saved your recording to the cloud, then you can go into your course's meet tool, find the recording in the "Cloud Recordings" tab, and click "Share". This will give you some text to copy and paste into an email to share a link to the recording. You can also click "Download" to save a file of the recording, which you can then share like a normal file.

Every meeting has the option of recording meetings automatically either to your computer or to the cloud. This feature has been disabled for the entire university's Zoom account. Even though the checkbox shows up under your meeting's settings, checking this box off will not work and once you save your meeting the option will be unchecked. This has been disabled due to limited cloud storage space, so instructors need to manually record each meeting.

To learn about taking attendance, view our article here.

Zoom offers tons of neat tools for teaching, such as breakout rooms, drawing over shared screens, a whiteboard, file sharing, green screen backgrounds and so much more. For videos and articles on all of these features, you can find some videos/articles below or check out Zoom's support site: https://support.zoom.us

• Zoom Video Breakout Rooms
• Zoom Meeting Controls
• Screen Sharing a Video Clip
• Screen Sharing a PowerPoint
• Share a Whiteboard
• Virtual Backgrounds
• Polling for Meetings

Participation and engagement are always a struggle in an online classroom setting. Here are some quick tips on how you can improve student engagement, track student attention rates, and switch things up from the usual lecture-style meet sessions.

• Require students to use their webcam (lead by example, use yours too!). This is the simplest, yet most effective way to make sure students are engaged and actively participating. Have students write down/draw answers to questions and then show them on their webcam. Make games out of being able to see each other, but not hear anything. This helps students feel closer to their peers and to you, so don't be shy!
• Create polls to gather student opinions, assess how well students understand the lesson you just taught, even a simple poll about how your students' weekend went can lead to higher rates of engagement.
• Utilize non-verbal feedback in the Participants window. Students can choose from a variety of icons to let you know that they agree, disagree, want you to talk faster/slower, need a break, and more. Just make sure you keep the Participants window open so you can monitor student responses!
• Utilize the whiteboard and annotation features to let students draw on the screen. Nothing promotes engagement more than asking a student to show what they know, so try the whiteboard for practice problems or ask students to share their screens. You can draw on their screens as well to offer some truly interactive feedback.
• Use the attention-tracking tool to see who may not be paying attention. This tool lets you know who doesn't have the Zoom meeting window in focus for more than 30 seconds. While this does not necessarily mean the student isn't focused, it's a good indicator to instructors that they may need to take a break or try something interactive to improve engagement. For more information on using this tool, see Zoom's article here.

While headphones and microphones can easily run upwards of $200+, you can get a decent webcam and microphone setup for closer to $50-70 with a little bit of research.

A good webcam should have a resolution of at least 720p. If you think that you will be teaching courses online for a really long time, it may be a good idea to invest a little bit more into a 1080p webcam so that as technology advances, your equipment stays up to date. You also want to make sure you have a USB webcam that plugs into your computer. Webcams built into laptops tend to be lower quality, but if it is at least 720p then it should work just fine. Here are some suggested webcams that are either budget-friendly, high-quality, or in between:

• $20 - Budget friendly, 720 p, USB camera
• $32 - Higher budget, 1080p, USB camera
• $66 - 2 in 1 webcam AND microphone, 1080p, USB camera (everything you need!)

Now, although there are some good webcams with microphones built in, like the one listed above, you may still find you need a headset to help block out background noise. For instructors who have children, dogs, or maybe host meetings in public, a quality headset with noise cancellation will help immensely. Again, here are some suggestions for budget-friendly and high-quality headsets:

• $22 - Budget friendly, noise canceling, USB headset
• $25 - Budget friendly, noise canceling, USB headset, padded design
• $50 - Higher budget, noise canceling, wireless headset, over-ear comfort

Most importantly, shop around! Find something that fits comfortably, has good reviews, cancels out noise, and works for you.

The first thing to note is that the "automatically record meetings" option within a meeting's settings has been disabled for the entirety of Franklin University's Zoom account. This is because we have limited cloud storage. So, if you turned this feature on and then couldn't find your recording, this is why. You will need to manually record your meetings.

Another reason a recording might not record is because the record button was not manually clicked during your meeting or the recording was stopped by accident. You might have accidentally clicked the stop recording button or, if you use shortcuts a lot, you may have accidentally hit "Alt + P", which pauses/stops recording.

To ensure you are always recording, make sure you see either of these icons in the top, left-hand corner of your screen while hosting a meet session. The first icon shows you are recording to your computer, while the second shows you're recording to the cloud:

If you created a meeting that allows students to join before you start the meeting, then when you join you will not automatically be assigned hosting rights. To fix this issue, there are 2 options:

1. Sign into the desktop application. If you have hosting rights in a meeting, this will properly authenticate your account and make you a host in the meeting.
2. Click on the Participants window within your meeting and click Claim Host.
   • If you do not see this button, then you may need to ask the original meeting owner to add you as an "Alternative Host." See our Team Taught instructions above.
     
     
3. This will prompt you to sign in with your Franklin credentials.
4. After following these steps, you should now be the host within your meeting.

If the process above does not grant you hosting rights, there may be an issue with how the meeting was set up or whichever account you are using. These basic checklist items can often resolve many permission issues:

• Make sure that you are joining a meeting that you personally created/own.
• If you don't own the meeting, make sure you are an "Alternative Host" in the meeting settings.
• Log into the Zoom desktop application.
• Log into the correct BlueQuill account (some users have staff, faculty and student accounts)

To download the Zoom desktop application, you can either start a meeting and automatically be prompted to download the app or visit this link: https://zoom.us/support/download

Once you have the app downloaded, to log in:

1. Open the application on your computer and click "Sign In."
2. If this is your first time logging in, on the right-hand side of the screen click on "Sign in with SSO."
   • If you have logged into Zoom before, then you can simply log in with your Franklin credentials.
3. Next, type in "Franklin" as your company domain and click "Continue."
4. This will cause a new browser tab to open that says, "Launch Zoom." You can click this to launch the application if it has not already automatically launched. Now you're ready to go!

If you find that students cannot hear or see you, make sure that your microphone and webcam icons (in the bottom, left-hand corner of the meeting) are not crossed out like so:

If they are crossed out, click the icon to turn each device on. You can also click on the arrow icons next to each device to select your audio and video devices, so make sure you have the right devices chosen.

If you cannot hear or see a student, open up the Participants menu and find the student's name. If they do not have a microphone or webcam icon like the one below, or if their icons are crossed out, then they may need to connect or turn on their device: