Zoom Orientation, Fall 2022

This orientation to Zoom explains how and why this web conferencing solution may be useful for you and your students. Many classrooms at USF are equipped to “webcast” to remote learners who may need to stay at home due to sickness or other exigencies. This page provides information and links to further details of various features and functions.   

Table of Contents

Zoom is USF’s web conferencing platform, and it is integrated with Canvas, our learning management system. Instructors may find Zoom useful for:

  • Webcasting from a classroom to remote students when COVID or other exigencies necessitate this remedy for live teaching.
  • Holding virtual office hours with individual students-at-a-distance.
  • Meeting students at-a-distance for instructional conferences.
    • Primary instruction (lecture).
    • Active learning exercises that students share with their classmates.
    • Breakouts for collaborative learning.
    • Whiteboards for “chalk-and-chalk” demonstrations.
    • Presentation of online videos, live, for immediate academic discussion.
  • Pre-recording lectures that can be uploaded and shared in the online classroom via Canvas Studio. There is an enabling feature that allows Zoom recordings to be directly sent to Studio.

PRELIMINARY STEPS FOR USING ZOOM

First authenticate yourself into Zoom by following the procedures shown in the handout.

Zoom should open and present you with its web interface.  Take a look around and orient yourself to its layout.  Hover your mouse over the red arrows for more information.

Zoom Meeting Settings

REVIEW KEY SETTINGS AND CUSTOMIZE THEM to suit your needs

  1. There are key settings in your Zoom account with which you should become familiar.

General Settings.

We do recommend that you select “only authenticated users” may join a meeting (as shown in screenshot below). This keeps the meeting exclusive to USF students only. It is possible to accommodate guest speakers through a separate step (not included in this orientation).authenticated users only

Recording Settings.

It is strongly recommended that you set your recordings to be deleted after 120 days (as shown in screenshot below). USF has a limit to the amount of Zoom recordings that can be stored as an institution. delete recordings after 120 days

Using Zoom

Schedule a Zoom meeting in your Canvas Course.

When you use Zoom for the first time, you will be downloading and installing a Zoom app on your computer that will work in the background for the most part.  It is not always invisible.  You will typically ssee this advisory when you launch a Zoom meeting:

You will then be presented with the Zoom interface.  Please review the interface and acquire a working familiarity.  (You may view the screencast in a separate post). We suggest you do this in a trial meeting with yourself only attending.  Experiment!  You won’t break anything.  If you need help, please contact Academic Technology Support via the Technology Support Center (send an email to tscticket@stfrancis.edu to get a timely response, within 24 hours). 

Direct your students to select Canvas and enter these meetings, via USF email, or Canvas messaging (the Inbox).  You may also choose to create a Canvas page or assignment to direct students, and/or a Canvas announcement.  Do a meet-and-greet as a trial run. 

If you choose to record a meeting, always select “record to cloud.”

You may enable the feature in Canvas Studio to automatically store Zoom recordings in studio.

You may create breakout meetings in Zoom, either informally (on-the-fly), or in advance for collaborative learning activities.

If you have any questions about using Zoom, contact Tech Support.

All Zoom Posts on this site

  • Zoom Polling

    Polling in Zoom, as with other similar programs, is a way to canvas your attendees for their votes or to do a knowledge-assessment spot check.  The polling feature is easily accomplished, from the host’s perspective, as demonstrated in this 2 minute screencast by Glen Gummess, Ed.D., educational technologist. [iframe width=”560px” height=”320px” allowfullscreen=”true” src=”https://stfrancis.instructuremedia.com/embed/70983eaa-905b-4e54-a80d-3c6398780b1f” frameborder=”0″][/iframe]

  • How to Record a Zoom Presentation

    College of Arts and Sciences Elizabeth Davies provided this handout to recording a Zoom session written by Recreation & Sport Management Professor Jerome Gabriel. It is primarily for students but is applicable for instructors as well. [embeddoc url=”https://e03551.a2cdn1.secureserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/How-to-Record-Your-Presentations-Using-Zoom.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”]