using zoom for lectures

[Ronald Mitchell]

For colleagues prepping to run classes using Zoom:

 

LIMITED LIABILITY CLAUSE: If you follow these instructions and anyone gets hurt, its not my fault!
BUT, if you see improvements, please send them to me.

 

I and Hayley Stevenson spent some time yesterday getting up to speed using Zoom for a lecture (NOT within Canvas, just freestanding). Learned a lot. So, to help others …  (I am sure there are great tutorials out there but I only “learn by doing”). [I have heard, but can’t confirm, that Zoom is more stable with particularly large classes while other programs will work fine with smaller ]

 

MOST IMPORTANT TAKEAWAY: You should spend at least an hour with a colleague practicing. Zoom is NOT that complicated and works fine BUT default settings are suboptimal for lectures and you need to get familiar with it. Probably will take about 1-2 hours to get the basics down well enough to stumble through your first lecture. People are ill-advised to think that they can fire up Zoom 5 minutes before their first class and expect it to go well.

 

You need to do SETUP first and then try your first “Meeting” (i.e., lecture/class session).

So, SETUP things to do:

a)       Open Zoom

b)      Select preferred ONLINE-selectable settings (you need to log in – probably using your university account)! Option defaults not set for courses, so choose wisely: https://zoom.us/profile/setting  (e.g., I selected to start meetings with me (host) with video and all participants muted in my 210-person class, but I will change that for my 4-person seminar)

c)       Second, select LOCAL-selectable settings to your desired options (from first screen when you open desktop Zoom app, click your profile icon in the upper-right corner and select Settings). 

 

Take time to position your webcam

Make sure to present yourself as you would like.  Some considerations:

·         Webcams have a habit of looking up your nostrils. Don’t let them.

·         Consider neutral clothing and neutral background to keep the focus on your ideas, not your clothes.

·         Webcams can make it appear you are not “looking at the camera” – to fix this, make the main screen you will be looking at into a small window (not full screen) and move it till it is near wherever your webcam is – then when you look at that part of the screen, it will appear to your students that you are looking at them.

·         Take time to position yourself relative to your webcam and check results carefully at maximum size – ensure your students see what you want them to see and nothing you don’t want them to see.

 

Now, Starting A Lecture (assuming PC – Mac people, change as appropriate)

a)       Keyboard shortcuts are crucial because its too hard to explain by menu choices and clicks): https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/205683899-Hot-Keys-and-Keyboard-Shortcuts-for-Zoom  (too hard to explain which things to click!!)  Main ones that seem useful to me:

·         Alt+H: Display/hide In-Meeting Chat panel  (⌘+Shift+H)

·         Alt+U:Display/hide Participants panel (⌘+U)

·         Alt+V: Start/Stop Video (⌘+Shift+V)

·         Alt+Y: Raise/lower hand (Option+Y)

·         Alt+A: Mute/unmute audio (⌘+Shift+A)

·         Alt+M: Mute/unmute audio for everyone except host Note: For the meeting host only (⌘+Control+U)

·         Alt+S: Launch share screen window and stop screen share Note: Will only work when meeting control toolbar has focus (⌘+Shift+S)

·         Alt+Shift+S: Start/stop new screen share Note: Will only work when meeting control toolbar has focus

·         Alt+T: Pause or resume screen share Note: Will only work when meeting control toolbar has focus (⌘+Shift+T)

·         Alt+F: Enter or exit full screen (⌘+Shift+F)

b)      Send out Meeting invites to all students

·         Do Alt+H and Alt+U (or Mac equivalents - ⌘+U: and ⌘+Shift+H) to open Chat and Participants panels, without which you won’t see students Raise their Hand (Alt+Y) (Mac = Option+Y) to pose a question!

·         Close all apps you won’t be using during class (unless you want students to read your email).

·         Alt+S (Mac = ⌘+Shift+S): Launch share screen window and select Screen or other option (I find the full Screen best).

·         Start up Powerpoint or whatever you are going to use.

·         Students will see a small picture of you lecturing in the upper right corner of their screen and the Powerpoint or whatever filling the rest of their screen.  From what I can make out, you canNOT make the little screen bigger or move it where you want on the screen. But it works adequately.

·         Make sure you are not on mute (Alt+A) (Mac = ⌘+Shift+A)

c)       KEY THING: test this with 2 other colleagues to make sure you understand how it works.  

d)      Be patient and compassionate with yourselves and your students. This is going to be frustrating (perhaps very) for all concerned. (Just heard Canvas took over an hour to send an email to a colleague’s students for their final exam). So, cut students slack and hope they do the same for you.

 

Best,

Ron and Hayley

 

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

Hayley Stevenson  Profesora Investigadora Asociada / Associate Professor Departamento de Ciencia Política y Estudios Internacionales Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Editor, Political Studies Latest book: Global Environmental Politics

 

 

 

 

 

[Axelrod, Mark]

Hayley and Ron,

Thank you! This is a great summary.

I just wanted to share a couple items I have picked up over the last week of increased zooming…

First is that your background can be changed to a green screen option (i.e., there is a set image behind you instead of whatever is in your house). There are a few presets, but you can also upload an image. Once you enable this option in the Settings tab that Hayley and Ron mention below, you can select this option with the arrow to the right of the Start/Stop Video icon in the lower left corner of the screen. After clicking the arrow, you select “Video Settings…” and then “Virtual Background”. The only downside is that your body movement can be a little bit pixelated because it responds slower than your actual movement (my shirt collar looked like flapping wings yesterday).

Second is that you can set up polls/surveys for any size group, and breakout rooms for smaller group discussions in the Settings tab on your Zoom Profile. There are some other potentially useful tools here also, especially for small classes (e.g., a whiteboard for brainstorming sessions). Once these are enabled in the Settings tab, they appear as options on your main zoom window (bottom of the screen for me). The breakout rooms can either be pre-selected or auto-generated (i.e., just pick number of rooms, and it automatically populates them evenly). You can then join each room individually to check in on the small groups, and broadcast announcements to everyone or only individual rooms. The Zoom website has good documentation of how to make this option work better.

 

Hope that is useful to everyone.

Good luck to all!

Mark

 

From: gep...@googlegroups.com <gep...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Ronald Mitchell
Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2020 2:43 PM
To: GEPED <gep...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [gep-ed] using zoom for lectures

 

For colleagues prepping to run classes using Zoom:

 

LIMITED LIABILITY CLAUSE: If you follow these instructions and anyone gets hurt, its not my fault!
BUT, if you see improvements, please send them to me.

 

I and Hayley Stevenson spent some time yesterday getting up to speed using Zoom for a lecture (NOT within Canvas, just freestanding). Learned a lot. So, to help others …  (I am sure there are great tutorials out there but I only “learn by doing”). [I have heard, but can’t confirm, that Zoom is more stable with particularly large classes while other programs will work fine with smaller ]

 

MOST IMPORTANT TAKEAWAY: You should spend at least an hour with a colleague practicing. Zoom is NOT that complicated and works fine BUT default settings are suboptimal for lectures and you need to get familiar with it. Probably will take about 1-2 hours to get the basics down well enough to stumble through your first lecture. People are ill-advised to think that they can fire up Zoom 5 minutes before their first class and expect it to go well.

 

You need to do SETUP first and then try your first “Meeting” (i.e., lecture/class session).

So, SETUP things to do:

1. Open Zoom

1. Select preferred ONLINE-selectable settings (you need to log in – probably using your university account)! Option defaults not set for courses, so choose wisely: https://zoom.us/profile/setting  (e.g., I selected to start meetings with me (host) with video and all participants muted in my 210-person class, but I will change that for my 4-person seminar)

1. Second, select LOCAL-selectable settings to your desired options (from first screen when you open desktop Zoom app, click your profile icon in the upper-right corner and select Settings). 

 

Take time to position your webcam

Make sure to present yourself as you would like.  Some considerations:

• Webcams have a habit of looking up your nostrils. Don’t let them.
• Consider neutral clothing and neutral background to keep the focus on your ideas, not your clothes.
• Webcams can make it appear you are not “looking at the camera” – to fix this, make the main screen you will be looking at into a small window (not full screen) and move it till it is near wherever your webcam is – then when you look at that part of the screen, it will appear to your students that you are looking at them.
• Take time to position yourself relative to your webcam and check results carefully at maximum size – ensure your students see what you want them to see and nothing you don’t want them to see.

 

Now, Starting A Lecture (assuming PC – Mac people, change as appropriate)

1. Keyboard shortcuts are crucial because its too hard to explain by menu choices and clicks): https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/205683899-Hot-Keys-and-Keyboard-Shortcuts-for-Zoom  (too hard to explain which things to click!!)  Main ones that seem useful to me:

• Alt+H: Display/hide In-Meeting Chat panel  (⌘+Shift+H)
• Alt+U:Display/hide Participants panel (⌘+U)
• Alt+V: Start/Stop Video (⌘+Shift+V)
• Alt+Y: Raise/lower hand (Option+Y)
• Alt+A: Mute/unmute audio (⌘+Shift+A)
• Alt+M: Mute/unmute audio for everyone except host Note: For the meeting host only (⌘+Control+U)
• Alt+S: Launch share screen window and stop screen share Note: Will only work when meeting control toolbar has focus (⌘+Shift+S)
• Alt+Shift+S: Start/stop new screen share Note: Will only work when meeting control toolbar has focus
• Alt+T: Pause or resume screen share Note: Will only work when meeting control toolbar has focus (⌘+Shift+T)
• Alt+F: Enter or exit full screen (⌘+Shift+F)

2. Send out Meeting invites to all students

• Do Alt+H and Alt+U (or Mac equivalents - ⌘+U: and ⌘+Shift+H) to open Chat and Participants panels, without which you won’t see students Raise their Hand (Alt+Y) (Mac = Option+Y) to pose a question!
• Close all apps you won’t be using during class (unless you want students to read your email).
• Alt+S (Mac = ⌘+Shift+S): Launch share screen window and select Screen or other option (I find the full Screen best).
• Start up Powerpoint or whatever you are going to use.
• Students will see a small picture of you lecturing in the upper right corner of their screen and the Powerpoint or whatever filling the rest of their screen.  From what I can make out, you canNOT make the little screen bigger or move it where you want on the screen. But it works adequately.
• Make sure you are not on mute (Alt+A) (Mac = ⌘+Shift+A)

3. KEY THING: test this with 2 other colleagues to make sure you understand how it works.  

3. Be patient and compassionate with yourselves and your students. This is going to be frustrating (perhaps very) for all concerned. (Just heard Canvas took over an hour to send an email to a colleague’s students for their final exam). So, cut students slack and hope they do the same for you.

 

Best,

Ron and Hayley

 

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

Hayley Stevenson  Profesora Investigadora Asociada / Associate Professor Departamento de Ciencia Política y Estudios Internacionales Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Editor, Political Studies Latest book: Global Environmental Politics

 

 

 

 

 

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[Dana R Fisher]

These are great,  Thank you!!!

Dana

Dana R. Fisher, UMD

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/DM6PR12MB4546F134AD1C10F96200925591F60%40DM6PR12MB4546.namprd12.prod.outlook.com.