Using Zoom for Teaching

This page seeks to clarify how to use zoom for teaching. 

I am a professor of Political Science and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon who started using Zoom on March 15, 2020 so I could be up to speed to teach online by March 31. Here are some tips to help others spin up more quickly than I did and avoid some pitfalls (there are some).

End User License Agreement (EULA): I wrote these carefully and tested them with colleagues. They seem to work. But you (the End User) agree to not hold me responsible for any harms that arise from using them.

• KEY Point #1: test everything with >3 colleagues (in student/participant role) to make sure you understand how it works.
• KEY Point #2: Be patient and compassionate with yourselves and your students. Zoom WILL be frustrating at first for all concerned.
• Key Point #3: Position your webcam so it shows what you want to show and nothing else.
• KEY POINT #4: Do NOT assume that a download of Participants after each class session will give you accurate "Attendance" -- Zoom appears to use usernames and email addresses as created by the user, which for many students will not match the names and email addresses in University records.
• KEY POINT #5: Set up RECURRING meetings, unless you want a new URL for every class session (see Step 5).
• KEY POINT #6: If using quizzes, see my points on Quizzes (end of Step 5).

These are BASIC tips to help instructors (professors, teachers, etc) get Zoon set up for a course quickly and use it adequately, with relatively few frustrations. To use Zoom to teach exactly how you like will require investing additional time. I hope this gets you started.

Table of Contents: I suggest you read top to bottom if you are just getting started

•  Step 1: Download Zoom DESKTOP app
• Step 2: Zoom terminology
• Step 3: Three types of settings: for the Desktop app, Online, and Meeting-specific ones.
• Step 4: Best settings depend on type / size of course
• Step 5: Create your class
• Step 6: Inform students of where and when your online class will be
• Step 7: Hold your class session
• Step 8:  Actions after class
• Step 9: Review how it went and fix one thing for the next class session.
• Step 10: Other useful links on teaching with Zoom

Step 1: Download Zoom DESKTOP app

Download and install using the link provided by your university or school, or use https://zoom.us/download

Step 2: Zoom terminology

Step 3: Three types of settings: for the Desktop app, Online, and Meeting-specific ones.

• Desktop app setttings: how Zoom looks to you as a Student in someone else's class (ie, in Participant mode). These do NOT affect your student's experience. Access: open Zoom desktop app, click gear in upper right corner, and select what you like. Zoom's instructions HERE. Check out Keyboard shortcuts.
• Online settings: use these to control what students can do in your classroom (ie, in Host mode). THESE are crucial to having teaching go the way you want and I found them fairly non-obvious. Access these from Desktop app -- Setttings -- Advanced Features -- View Advanced Features or HERE (after logging in).
• Meeting-specific settings: even more control over the student experience in your classroom. Access from Online settings. Includes the ability to create Quizzes ("Polls" in Zoom language) and use them during a class session.

Step 4: Best settings depend on type / size of course

Choose best defaults for your classes.  I teach small seminars and large lectures.  Here are the key settings that work for me.

Step 5: Create your class

Okay, listen up. Follow these carefully. Change them if you don't like mine. But this is the simplest approach:

• Go here: https://zoom.us/meeting/schedule
• Select as follows:
  • Topic: Enter your Course Number and Title
  • Description/When/Duration/TimeZone: leave as they are
  • CRUCIAL: Select "Recurring meeting" to create a single TERM-LONG URL. This URL is your Virtual Classroom -- students with this URL know that if its class time, they will find you here.
  • Meeting ID -- Select Generate Automatically
  • Meeting Password -- Un-Select "Require meeting password" (you don't require one for real classes)
  • Video: For Lectures: Host ON -- Participant OFF // For Seminars: Host ON -- Participant ON
  • Record the meeting automatically in the cloud: I set this On but NOTE: if Video and Audio are ON, this may constitute a FERPA violation (US educational privacy rules).
  • Click SAVE! Your settings -- bottom of page!
• From the resulting screen that describes the meeting you just created:
  • COPY (but do not click) the Join URL link in the middle of the screen as the "Virtual Classroom" URL for the whole term. Crucial: Add that URL as a link on your Canvas course page, reminding students of when to "attend" class.
  • Do NOT click the Start this Meeting button, since you are just choosing Meeting Settings now.
  • Quizzes: If you want Online quizzes or surveys during the term, go to the bottom of the page you are on where it says "You have not created any poll yet." and click the "Add" button (to add a Poll). Things to know:
    • From what I can tell, students cannot submit their answers to a poll until they answer all questions. Therefore two options seem appropriate:
    • Try polls first (you need to enable Polling in Settings or you won't see the Polls option when you are hosting a meeting).  Look at the results (see below) and see whether you are getting what you want. The reports do not, imho, do a great job of capturing what I want if you use my method of generic quizzes. So, you must choose to write all your quizzes in Zoom or figure out how to use "generic" quizzes that capture what you want.
    • My solution (not for everyone, so try first!!!)
      • REASONING for doing it this way:
        • On the one hand, Polls can't be submitted until completed, and you don't want students to "lose their work" if they close their Polling Window.
          But on the other hand, if you reuse the same Quiz (Poll) during a given Class session (Meeting),
        • Zoom will (I think) overwrite the results from the earlier version of the Poll, essentially deleting them. If I am right on this, that is a bad outcome.So, as far as I can tell, you need a different Poll for each question.
      • Create ten generic, one-question quizzes with each POLL entitled Q1, Q2, Q3, etc
        • For each of these 10 POLLS, the first QUESTION is Question 1, Question 2, Question 3, etc. and the answers being A/B/C/D/E.
        • During any class, to give a quiz:
          • Screen-share a Powerpoint with ACTUAL Question 1
          • Select Poll Q1 from drop-down menu at top of Poll window, which will present students with a Poll where question is Question 1 and A/B/C/D/E are the options
          • Close Poll Q1 after all results in.
          • Repeat for ACTUAL Question 2 with Poll Q2, etc.
        • This should generate interpretable Quiz answers in the downloadable Poll results that Zoom generates (see below).

Step 6: Inform students of where and when your online class will be

Zoom "invitations" inform people of the location (URL) and date/time of a meeting. Most teachers do NOT NEED invitations because they can create an "Attend Class Now" link to their Virtual classroom URL on their Canvas/Blackboard page. Students can always find the class link there. This solves two problems:

• You don't need to find student emails to let studens in your class -- a Canvas announcement broadcasts to all students anyway.
• Students don't have to keep track of the Virtual Classsroom URL -- they always access it from the "Attend Class Now" link.
• IMPORTANT POINT ON ATTENDANCE: Zoom appears to identify students by username and email address entered when creating a Zoom account. For many students, these will NOT match University records and uniquelyl identify students.  I am not sure of the solution here but an initial solution may be to require students to enter FULL university email address, e.g., student@youruniversity.edu for name or email address when entering  your class. Without a reliable student identifier, you can't take attendance in large classes.

Step 7: Hold your class session

• Go to Canvas/Blackboard before your class starts and click the "Attend Class Now" link (just like your students). Your students will already be in the room or will show up soon, via the Canvas/Blackboard link.
• Open the Chat window (Alt+H) so you can see student questions.
• Open the Participants window (Alt+U) so you can see students "raised hands", unmute them etc.
• To Screen share, use the Share menu button (or Alt+S) and select the App you want to share. If you are the showing videos, make sure to select "More" in Zoom menu (top of screen - 3 vertical dots) and then select Share Computer Audio [else, they won't be able to hear the audio of your Powerpoint or youtube video.]
• Give a Quiz: You can give a quiz by using the Poll menu button and selecting the quiz type you set up when you created the meeting (see above).
• Invite a Guest Lecturer: Get a guest lecturer from anywhere in the world by sending them the link and time/date for your Virtual Classroom. When they show up you can select their name in the Participants window and make them "Co-Host" which allows both you and them to speak or share screens.

Step 8:  Actions after class

• Recordings -- Share your recording link for asynchrous students to use. Zoom takes a while to generate a meeting Recording.  Zoom will send an email with the URL. You can post that to your Canvas/Blackboard site. I imagine there is a URL that goes to ALL your videos and posting that on Canvas would avoid you having to add a new Recording link after each class.
• Get Attendance.
  • Go to https://uoregon.zoom.us/account/my/report and you will see a list of your meetings.
  • To the far right is a "Participants" column that has the number of students who attended.
  • Click on the number of Participants (its a link) and a box will open up. Simply click Export ("Export with meeting data" and "Show unique users" don't seem to give you duration and "attentiveness" scores).
  • You now have attendance.
• Get Quiz results
  • Go to https://zoom.us/account/report/
  • In the Usage Reports tab, click Meeting.
  • Next to Report Type, select Poll Report.
  • Click Search button << IMPORTANT but easy to overlook.
  • For the Quiz you want to get results of, select Generate.
  • Zoom will redirect you to the Report Queues tab where you can download the report as a CSV file.
  • More Zoom instructions HERE.

Step 9: Review how it went and fix at least one thing before your next class session.

Step 10: Other useful links

• Duke's lessons from switching to remote learning in their campus in China: https://keepteaching.duke.edu/
• Harvard's Using Zoom to teach online // Schedule a Zoom meeting in Canvas // Zoom and Canvas

If you fix one thing at a time, by midterms you should be in good shape.

I hope some of this has been helpful.

Ronald Mitchell, Professor
Department of Political Science and Program in Environmental Studies
University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403-1284
rmitchel@uoregon.edu
https://rmitchel.uoregon.edu/
IEA Database Director: https://iea.uoregon.edu/