Category: Zoom

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Keep Zoom Up to Date!

Zoom regularly provides new versions of their desktop PC and Mac client. These updates add new features, provide bug fixes, and enhance security. As such, it’s important to keep the program up-to-date.

Here’s how to check for updates: 

  1. Sign in to Zoom desktop client.
  2. In the upper right hand corner, click your profile picture, then click on Check for Updates.
  3.  If there is an update available, click on Update, then Install.

Or watch below! (Must log in with W&L credentials.)

If you see this error message:

Zoom error - auto update disabled

then Zoom was installed through the Addigy Self-Service. Don’t panic! Just follow these steps:

  1. Click on the Addigy icon (in red below) in your task bar and select Install Software:
    :Addigy icon
  2. Under the Install tab (on the left), scroll down until you find Zoom. Click on the Install button.
    Addigy self-service Install tab

Need help? Contact the ITS Information Desk at 540.458.4357 (HELP) or email help@wlu.edu.

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NEW! All W&L Zoom Pro accounts can host meetings with up to 300 participants total!

Zoom srcset= Profile showing 300 participant limit for meetings with unlimited minutes” width=”525″ height=”271″>

That’s right, folks, if you need to host a meeting for up to 300 participants total, now you can! All W&L faculty, staff, and students with a Zoom Pro license can use Zoom to meet and collaborate using video, voice, and screen sharing across campus or around the world with up to 300 participants — no need for the large meeting or webinar license! (But if you DO need the large meeting or webinar license, contact help@wlu.edu or call 540.458.4357 (HELP) to make your request.)

Questions about Zoom?  You know what to do: contact the ITS Information Desk at 540.458.4357 (HELP) or email help@wlu.edu.

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Zoom-Canvas Integration is now active!

The Canvas-Zoom integration allows instructors to schedule and manage online meetings with their students. 

When you create a Zoom meeting within Canvas, you do not need to send meeting invites to students who are enrolled in the course.

A notification is also sent out to students within Canvas, as well as to their W&L email (assuming they haven’t changed the default notifications). Additionally, an event is created with the Zoom meeting information in the course calendar.

Students only use the Zoom tool in Canvas to join meetings created by Teachers in the course. Students can use Zoom outside of Canvas — by logging into myapps.wlu.edu with their W&L credentials and clicking the Zoom tile OR wlu.zoom.us with their W&L credentials — to create and host their own meetings.

How to Add Zoom to Your Canvas Course

Here’s a 3 minute video that will show you how to enable Zoom in your Canvas course and create a meeting invite for your students:

How to Add Zoom to Your Canvas Course

Open Settings

Open Settings

In Course Navigation, click the Settings link.

Open Navigation

Open Navigation

Click the Navigation tab.

Enable Zoom

how to enable Zoom in your Canvas course navigation

Click the blue “Save” button. After the browser refreshes, you will see the Zoom link in your course navigation. Click on the Zoom link to schedule meetings for your Canvas course!  (You will first be asked to authorize Zoom before you can use the tool. Once you click the “Authorize” button, you will be able to schedule or start meetings with your students.)

NOTE: Not all Zoom meeting settings, such as pre-assigning breakout rooms or creating polls, are available in the Zoom app in Canvas. Additional meeting settings are available in the W&L Zoom web portal at wlu.zoom.us.

But you can then import that meeting into Canvas, by clicking on the 3 vertical buttons next to “Schedule a New Meeting”:

screenshot of how to import a Zoom meeting into the Canvas-Zoom interface

and entering the Meeting ID. When you import the meeting, it will then be treated as if you’d created that Zoom meeting within Canvas. Students will receive notifications in Canvas and through their W&L email and an event with the Zoom information will be added to the course calendar.

Questions? Need help? Contact the ITS Information Desk at 540.458.4357 or help@wlu.edu.

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Inside Higher Ed: “Yes, Your Zoom Teaching Can Be First-Rate”

Stephen Hersh, a faculty member and former advertising executive, outlines six steps for how you can create a community of active learning online if you “use the medium.”

What did all this do for the learning process? Zoom became a way to implement active learning, the style of instruction in which students participate in the process rather than playing the role of passive audience. Active learning can make it easier to learn, and easier to remember what they have learned. To make this happen, this was my checklist:

  1. Talking less. Zoom was just not friendly to a talking head. I thought of my mini lectures not as events in themselves but as introductions or kickoffs to small-group work sessions.
  2.  
  3. Motivating students to come to class prepared. We can’t ditch live lectures without replacing them. My students loved the booklets I handed out, which basically enabled them to take in quickly the material that I would have explained if I had done a conventional lecture. When students encountered the material in several forms throughout the course, it helped make the concepts stick. I could have quizzed them on the reading before each class, but it turned out not to be necessary — they made it clear in the discussions they had done the reading.
  4.  
  5. Using Zoom rooms. To apply Andy Warhol’s adage, on Zoom everyone is famous for 15 seconds. In small breakout rooms, they can take ownership of the ideas, identify what’s not clear to them and what they disagree with, and test how far they can run with the material on their own. They can think critically and build their skills, applying the ideas to solve problems.
  6.  
  7. Varying the rhythm and structure. Zoom is the ultimate in low production values, but we can compensate with variety. So, I emulated the structure of a television variety show, but rather than using this structure to deliver jokes, I delivered a canon of social science theories. After each major idea, I asked students to go into a breakout room to apply the concept to analyze a situation or solve a problem. For example, when we studied cultural anthropology, I asked them to teach the others about a personal experience they had as a member of a cultural group such as an ethnic, racial or religious group, or a gender or gender identity group. I tried to keep each breakout discussion to about five minutes, because students told me the conversations tended to be less productive if they went on for much longer than that. As they said in vaudeville, “Leave them wanting more.” With this format, I was able to move on to something else before Zoom fatigue set in.
  8.  
  9. Adopting the right mind-set and attitude. If you believe Zoom teaching is inherently worse than classroom teaching, it will be. If you can wrap your mind around the exciting possibilities of Zoom — or just give it a fair try — you’ve taken the first step. There are many ways to cultivate Zoom enthusiasm and make it infectious. For example, think: Why do I love this field to begin with? How can I express that on Zoom?
  10.  
  11. Continuing to evolve the format with input from students. Throughout the quarter, I asked the class what was working best on Zoom. Aside from just asking, you might consider using polling tools like PollEverywhere.com or Slido (which is at sli.do). Speaking of trying things out and evolving, if you’re not comfortable with the technical aspects of how Zoom works, seek help!

Zoom has its drawbacks. It is not very welcoming to students who lack a good internet connection or a private place to study. It can leave everyone feeling disconnected, and it can trigger Zoom fatigue. But when used thoughtfully, Zoom can be the setting for transforming a class into an active community of teacher-learners.

Read the full article at https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/07/08/faculty-member-and-former-ad-executive-offers-six-steps-improving-teaching-zoom

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“TO ZOOM OR NOT TO ZOOM”

My university, like most universities across the country and globe, is struggling with a range of questions about how to operate during the pandemic this coming fall. I’d like to address two of those questions:

1) Is a zoom classroom inferior to a traditional classroom?

2) Should professors decide whether to conduct their classes traditionally or by zoom?

The short answers are: no and yes.

Read more at Chris Gavaler’s blog, The Patron Saint of Superheroes