Zoom Help

[Paul Wolff]

Zoom is a fantastic tool for web conferencing, but it can also help you teach remotely! We can help you set up break out rooms for synchronous group work in a class session, or record your lecture so you can share it with your students asynchronously. Just let us know what you’re trying to do and we’ll help you find a solution. We have a number of recommended settings depending on your class size and what you’re trying to do. Post your Zoom-related questions here!

[Mike Aguilar]

Hi,
I have a large lecture class (~250 students). I do a lot of active learning, wherein I pose a question, then the students breakout into “rooms” and work on the problem. I know how to do that in Zoom. I also know how to visit each room and check on my students. However, I can’t check on all of them. I would like to share that burden with my TAs. Is there a way to easily permit my TAs to join certain rooms, just as I can as the host? It seems like our subscription doesn’t permit multiple hosts.
Thanks,
Mike

[Kelly Hogan]

Hi Mike,
While I haven’t used this yet, I too was thinking about how to use ULAs for active learning. I thin they can be listed as “co-hosts” once the meeting begins. https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/206330935-Enabling-and-Adding-a-Co-Host
I was able to change this setting under “meeting (basic)” in my settings. Do you think this will work?

[Kalina Staub]

We played around with this in our department Zoom practice session yesterday, and while the co-hosts could join rooms, they did not get the alerts when someone in a group asked for help, so I think you would have to make sure the TAs or ULAs know which rooms they need to be monitoring or maybe set it up so that there is one TA or ULA per breakout room.

[Tyler Ritter]

There is a new service group on help.unc.edu for faculty with Zoom questions.

[Matthew Bernacki]

Just a quick follow up on Kalina’s suggestion above. You can manually assign participants to rooms, so if you are inviting TAs as participants, you could assign them to rooms manually, then populate those rooms with student members as part of breakout groups. That way you can systematically assign someone to facilitate/support the student groups. The TA wouldn’t necessarily have a “host” status, but if your ratio of TAs to students can accommodate it, this can give you a form of support per group.

[Robin Visser]

Will UNC be offering a pedagogy workshop on how to conduct Zoom breakout sessions? I heard that would happen but don’t see any sessions scheduled.

[Gabrielle Berlinger]

Hi!
I can’t seem to figure out how to record a short video that I can then upload to my sakai site for my students. I’m trying to do it in Zoom — any tips?
thank you!

[Paul Wolff]

Gabrielle,

Absolutely! We have some instructions here: https://keepteaching.unc.edu/strategies/zoom-pre-record-presentations-to-share-with-students/

If you aren’t seeing the “Record” option in the bottom menu, it may be in the “More” section due to screen resolution.

[Emily Burkhead]

I’ve heard of using the breakout rooms on Zoom as a way of proctoring tests remotely: each student is assigned to an individual breakout room and uses their web camera to display their work space (potentially also share entire computer screen) as they complete the test. In playing around with the breakout rooms so far, it isn’t clear to me whether I could actually see them all at the same time this way, or would only be able to see someone in a room if I “join the room” that they are in – and in that case, I wouldn’t be able to see any of the other students at the same time? I have ~150 students in two different sections, so being able to see more than a single individual at once is definitely needed. Thanks to all who are helping direct us and answer questions in this very unusual circumstance!

[Kalina Staub]

I would also love suggestions on Remote Proctoring via Zoom. I have heard talk of splitting students into rooms with a TA or ULA proctor and having each student take the test with their webcam on in these larger breakout rooms. Here you couldn’t have the student share their screen though as others could see. Alternatively, you could do as you suggest but assign TAs co-host roles and you and the TAs could all be randomly bouncing around the breakout rooms to discourage cheating.

[Paul Wolff]

Emily,

One thing to think about is whether your students will have reliable internet and/or be able to attend synchronous class sessions (they may have children home from school now, be in a different time zone, or be caring for sick loved ones). Since we don’t have an official proctoring service, you may be setting yourself up for an overly complex situation where students connections freeze, webcams aren’t working, etc. While you could potentially use this method, we’re generally advising faculty to lean heavily on the honor code and trust our students in this time of crisis. I’m happy to brainstorm more if proctoring is something you really want to try to do, but it’s o.k. to pull back expectations regarding what you would have done in a face to face class given the situation and keep it as simple as possible when looking for a solution.

[Paul Wolff]

Kalina,

I just responded to Emily about this, but I think proctoring via Zoom is going to add a lot of complexity and cause overdue stress/frustration. You could definitely use breakout rooms with TAs monitoring, but there are so many potential technical issues that might arise and our students may not always be able to attend a synchronous session given these conditions. What we’re hearing from university leadership is to lean heavily on the honor code and don’t over-complicate your assessment solution – try to keep it simple and be as flexible as you can.

[Emily Burkhead]

Thanks, Paul. I have asked my students to complete a survey through Sakai indicating what access they think they’ll have (time zone they’re in, internet speed, web camera, ability to take/upload photos, stylus/touch screen to annotate electronic files, etc) to help shape those plans as well. Having never really used Zoom before, I was trying to get a handle on its functionality to know what is even possible. I’m very thankful to have the Learning Community Chat option tomorrow and hope to get lots more ideas of how to handle this. While I do want to give every student the benefit of the doubt on best intentions, I am always looking for ways to minimize their likelihood of making inappropriate choices.

[Paul Wolff]

Emily,

Thank you for surveying your students – that’s such a great approach! I’ll be at all three of those sessions tomorrow so we can chat more at that time. Zoom would definitely give you the functionality you’re looking for, you’d just need to decide how to handle students who have a connection drop off or an inactive webcam, etc.

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