Zoom – Digital Learning & Inquiry (DLINQ)

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Zoom is Middlebury’s videoconferencing tool. It allows you to schedule and record online meetings or invite remote guest speakers to your class or event.

All Middlebury faculty, staff and students have access to Zoom.

Zoom meetings allow you to share slides from your desktop, create small group meeting rooms, and more. You can use Zoom to digitally connect with individual students, whole classes, guest teachers, writers, and others.

It’s simple to use, and accessible using your computer camera, a webcam, or your phone’s camera. You can also connect to any Zoom room via voice call through a special telephone number.

Access

To log into your account:

Go to go.middlebury.edu/zoom
Click the Sign-in button at the top right of your screen.
You will be redirected to a Middlebury login page. Enter your Middlebury credentials (@middlebury.edu email address and password).

Step by Step Instructions

Join a meeting

Share my screen

Schedule a meeting

And other frequently asked questions

Tool-in-Practice/Examples

As Amy Collier has written, “we privilege the voices in the room.” It’s a natural tendency, one that we are often unaware of (if we’re in the room). When we work across distance through videoconferencing, its important to be mindful of how we privilege co-location, and the effect that can have on the collaboration and work we wish to do.

Here are a few tips that can support collaboration, work, and teaching across distances.

Always ask: “Who is not in the room who could be?” “What contributions am I missing out on that I don’t need to?”
Check in across distance to see how collaborations and work are coming along.
Pay attention to what people on screen can see. Think about your lighting and background, but also be aware of whether you and others in the room are in view.
Allow time in virtual meetings and collaborations for connecting and relationship-building
Find back channel spaces for communication between meetings (Slack, e-mail, text messages, even Twitter).
Develop and be ourselves digital allies, who can act as connectors and supporters to make sure virtual meetings are inclusive and successful.
Recognize and appreciate time zone differences. Early morning and late afternoon means different things to different people.

Most important is to remember that people, and not digital tools, are the most important technology at play in collaboration at a distance. We are not connecting across time zones and thousands of miles because we can, we are connecting because we should.

See more blog posts about remote work

Using Zoom in Canvas

Zoom is, by default, integrated into all Middlebury Canvas courses. You should see a link in your Canvas course menu on the left.

If you are planning to use Zoom for class meetings, we highly recommend scheduling those Zoom meetings within your Canvas course, rather than using the Zoom desktop app. The benefits to scheduling Zoom class meetings within your Canvas course are:

Your students will have access and reminders to join class meetings right from Canvas.
You don’t have to email or otherwise send meeting invitations, links, or passwords to students, which they might then lose.
Students don’t have to keep track of meeting links or passwords.
If you cloud record your Zoom meetings that you’ve scheduled within Canvas, you and your students will have direct access to those recordings right from Canvas.

To schedule a Zoom meeting from within Canvas:

Navigate to Zoom in your lefthand course menu. Note: depending on how you have your navigation menu ordered, Zoom may appear in a different place within the menu.

Click the “Schedule a New Meeting” button at the top right of the Zoom page.
Give the meeting a name, and choose the start date, the start time, and the time zone.
If the meeting will occur regularly, tick the “Recurring meeting” checkbox under the time zone field. Select the recurrence period (daily, weekly, monthly, no fixed time) and how often the meeting will repeat. If the meeting will be weekly, you can choose multiple days to repeat it.
Set the end date.
If you will be inviting a guest speaker to a specific class meeting, you may want to add them as an “Alternative Host” for that individual meeting. Doing so gives them hosting privileges for that meeting (so they can, for example, share their screen and control breakout rooms). Designating them as an alternative host also will generate an automated email to them that includes a link to the meeting.
Click “Save.”

To edit or delete a Zoom meeting from within Canvas:

Navigate to Zoom in your lefthand course menu.
Click on the meeting name from your list of meetings.
Scroll down and click “Edit this Meeting” or “Delete this Meeting.”
If editing, make the desired changes and then click “Save.”

Additional Notes:

Zoom meetings that you schedule within Canvas are also accessible from your Zoom desktop app or on your Zoom web account. However, the same is not true in reverse. Meetings that you schedule from your desktop app or on the Zoom web account cannot be added or transferred to your Canvas Zoom.
You cannot pre-assign breakout rooms or enable language interpretation for a session from Zoom within Canvas. However, once you have scheduled your class Zoom meetings in Canvas, you can navigate to https://middlebury.zoom.us/ and edit your meetings from there to add any breakout room pre-assignments. Changes made via your Zoom web account will be reflected in your Canvas Zoom, as long as you originated those meetings in Canvas to begin with.
You can choose to hide the Zoom link for students, if you are not planning to use it. In your Canvas course, go to Settings > Navigation and move Zoom from the top bank of items to the bottom bank, and click “Save.”

Social Presence Practices

Ideally, join the meeting from a quiet location. Pay attention to background noise and do your best to minimize.
If you have one, activate your webcam and position it so that it is level and you are facing it. Make sure your room has good lighting and adjust so that your face can be seen.
Remember, people can see you up close, so be aware of gestures and facial expressions.
Right click on the box that represents you in the meeting and add your name and department to the screen so we all know who is on the call (this can be customized on each call)
Display your name on your video screen by going in to Zoom, select settings, then video, and check the box that says “display participant’s name on video”.
Look for the chat button in your menu bar at the start of the meeting to send and receive messages from organizers or participants.

Technical Best Practices

These best practices are intended to make using Zoom more convenient for folks running standard meetings, and don’t necessarily apply to meetings which need an added level of security or control.

Wear headphones when connecting to a Zoom meeting from a computer. Apple earbuds with the built-in microphone work particularly well. Other recommended mics here.
Mute your microphone when you’re in a meeting and are listening to others.
Set your Personal Meeting ID (PMI) to your work phone number, set up a customized link. PMI and Meeting ID explained here.
Use your Personal Meeting Room (PRM, uses your PMI) for as many meetings as you can. (If you launch your PMI from the Zoom app, do so from the “Meeting” tab. Launching a new meeting from the “Home” tab may create a separate meeting with a different URL for one time use.)
If you’re using Zoom to bring in a remote guest speaker or presenter, share your PMI with them and schedule a test call in advance to work out any kinks.
Enable the “Join Before Host” feature in your PMR so that others can meet in your absence or tardiness, and so that you can join from a video conferencing system or telephone when necessary.
If recording a meeting, record a local MP4 to your computer.
If you use Canvas, schedule class meetings using the Canvas Zoom LTI.
If you use Outlook, schedule non-class meetings using the Outlook Scheduling Plugin.

Security

Zoom has released a new software update which adds a Security option to the Zoom meeting controls bar of the in-meeting experience. See below for a screenshot example. This new feature allows meeting hosts to easily manage the security of their Zoom meetings, including the ability to quickly lock a Zoom meeting, enable the waiting room feature, and a number of other helpful options to keep your Zoom meetings safe and secure.

To update to the newest version, open your Zoom desktop client. Then go to your “zoom.us” menu from your desktop client and click on “Check for Updates…” See screen shot below.

Screen shot showing where to find the update Zoom link

Security is very important to ITS and Middlebury. ITS continues to evaluate Zoom’s security posture and we have published an evolving list of guidelines and tips for safe use, as well as explanations of Zoom’s security options here: http://go.middlebury.edu/zoominfo