Zoom Skills, Level 100
“ANITA awaiting launch” by UCL Mathematical & Physical Sciences is licensed under CC BY 2.0
These are the basic Zoom skills to acquire – not only for teaching, but for general Zoom use. Ohio State faculty, staff and students are covered by “pro” level accounts.
***NOTE: Additional security settings have been applied to OSU’s Zoom implementation as of March 5, 2021 – check your profile settings and make sure you’re up to date.
***Check that your version of Zoom (whether desktop/laptop or on mobile device) is at the current level – Zoom does frequent feature updates. If you (or your students) are having trouble with a using particular feature when on a Zoom call, the first thing to check is that your version is current.
Where Do I Start?
1. Look over your profile settings
- PLEASE ADD A HEADSHOT TO YOUR PROFILE… especially if you’re going to be a “talking head” for your lectures…(e.g., if you are recording lectures without a camera capturing you, live)
2. Scheduling single and recurring meetings in OSU’s Zoom portal.
3. Testing your Zoom audio settings and video settings.
4. Starting/running/ending Zoom meetings (Windows and Mac; Linux and mobile also available).
- Muting all participants to prevent talk-over
- Allowing/disallowing participants to share video
5. Monitoring the Participants area (and being aware of the settings available there).
6. Monitoring the Chat area (and being aware of the settings available there).
7. Recording a meeting (to the cloud or locally; knowing that there are differences between local v. cloud recordings)
- OSU currently stores cloud recordings for 120 days (this was changed as of 2/5/2021).
- Know the difference between cloud versus local recordings and be intentional about where you record
- Advantages to cloud recording:
- If you’re new to running Zoom sessions, recording to the cloud is simpler, easier to manage
- For course sessions, schedule the course sessions and do the recordings from within Canvas (easier to manage, post-event; more consistent UI for students)
- Cloud recordings automatically provide captions, which are easily editable captions (ADA compliance)
- Advantages to local recording:
- If you have more advanced repurposing to do (edits/trimming, or you wish to put it up to MediaSite or YT)
- There “can” be a recording quality issue, if your bandwidth is poor (“Your Mileage May Vary”)
- Processing time – AU prep spike may lead to longer turnaround time/backlog; we experienced this in SPR
- Meeting link != recording link (You’ll need to get the separate recording link from the meeting host)
7. Using the native Zoom whiteboard
- Sharing a whiteboard
- Annotating on a whiteboard
- Saving the whiteboard – whiteboard can be saved as a local .jpg; it gets stored in the local Zoom folder
8. Last, but certainly not least – Zoom Security … yes, this matters. Zoombombing, anyone?
“McMurdo Station” by UCL Mathematical & Physical Sciences is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Zoom Skills, Level 200
1. Screen sharing – MANY subtopics here…
- Screensharing PowerPoint presentations
- Screensharing Keynote presentations
2. Using dual monitors within Zoom
- This is one way to do it – looks a bit complicated, but it’s pretty functional
3. Setting up a separate Zoom session on the iPad
- In some cases (or on first attempt to use iPad with Zoom), may need to rejoin osuwireless, redo/re-accept trusted certificate, and go thru first-time setup of the Zoom app … “Screen” options then show up when you go to “Share”.
4. Breakout rooms (setup, preassigning participants, moving in/around)
- Each breakout room gets full audio, video and screenshare functionality
- Cornell has a decent how-to article (both from instructor side and student side)
- A few caveats for mobile device users – e.g., breakouts CANNOT be managed by the host from, say, an iPad
- A few caveats for sessions hosts WRT recording – breakout rooms are NOT recorded; if host moves from main room to a breakout during cloud-recorded session, the recording is paused until the host returns
5. Creating and using polls
6. Using a second webcam as a document camera
7. Using videos within your session – caveats exist here!
8. Virtual backgrounds – you will need good system resources to make this work well…
9. Webinars v. meetings – if you have over 300 participants, you’ll need to do your session as a webinar; contact Terry Bradley for assistance/additional information. (Additional license is needed to run these.)
Where To Get Help
Support areas, both on Zoom’s corporate site, and resources created by ODEE:
OSU-specific Zoom help
Physics YouTube Zoom Tutorial Playlist – this is the list of all tutorial sessions (video captures of the workshops I did in SPR20, just before campus closed, as well as the three AU20 Instructor Prep Workshops, plus additional short videos on additional topics and techniques).
- NOTE THAT SOME INFORMATION HAS BEEN SUPERSEDED… default security settings have changed through 2020; we’ve learned a lot about how to use these tools, from SPR20 to AU20.
- Due to technical issues with recording the SPR20 sessions, the slides aren’t visible in the videos (recheck/insert slide deck). The AU20 workshops were done all on Zoom, so any content I screenshared are definitely visible.