Resources

Zoom: Virtual Meetings

By Kirk Main

What is Zoom?

Zoom is a web conferencing tool that provides a “virtual room” for attendees to meet online in real time, to help facilitate online synchronous interaction and collaboration. Zoom’s main features include two-way video, text chat, whiteboards, breakout rooms, polling, and recording of meetings. Zoom can be used for a variety of instructional purposes, such as presentations, office hours, class discussions, exam reviews, guest lectures, or class group work.

All University employees and students with an active “@ncsu.edu” email address can create and host Zoom meetings by logging into their NC State Zoom account. Additionally, instructors who use Moodle can add a Zoom Meeting activity in their Moodle course (Turn editing on > Add an activity or resource > Zoom meeting).

Some features of Zoom can be used directly in a Web browser, but for the best experience using Zoom, it is recommended to download and use the Zoom client application.

For more information about Zoom in general, see Zoom’s website.

Included Zoom Features

NC State’s license for Zoom provides access to the following features, at no cost to individual users.

  • Pro account – unlimited group meetings; removes duration limitation of Basic account
  • Meeting – up to 300 participants (increased from 100 in Summer, 2019)
  • The following features are in limited supply and so a reservation is required to use them:
    • Large Meeting – up to 500 participants
    • Webinar – up to 500 participants

NC State’s license provides a limited number of Large Meetings and Webinars that can be “borrowed” by individual users. If you are interested in scheduling a Large Meeting or Webinar, it can be temporarily allocated to you and then deallocated after your scheduled session has taken place. For more information about borrowing a Large Meeting or Webinar, contact DELTA’s LearnTech help desk.

Getting Started with Zoom

For more generic “getting started” information, see the article on Zoom’s website, “Getting Started On PC and Mac“.

Signing In

To sign in, go to https://ncsu.zoom.us and click the “Use NC State Login” button. This will log you in using your NC State credentials.

Download The Zoom App

Some features of Zoom can be used directly in a Web browser, but for the best experience using Zoom, it is recommended to download and use the Zoom client application, which is available via Self Service and Zoom’s Website. For mobile devices (iOS and Android), visit your platform’s app store and search for “zoom” to find the Zoom mobile app.

Need on Linux? See https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/204206269-Installing-Zoom-on-Linux

To Start

When you launch the Zoom client, there are two options. Select “Join a Meeting” if you want to join an existing meeting, or select “Sign In” for all other functions.

Zoom is integrated with NC State’s Single Sign On (SSO) system. On the Sign In screen, click the “Sign In With SSO” button, and on the next screen, enter “ncsu” (with no punctuation), and then click “Continue.” You will be directed to a browser window to log in with your NC State credentials.

Home Screen

Once you have logged in, you will see the home screen. There are four tabs at the top of the screen: Home, Chat, Meetings, and Contacts. The default tab is “Home”. Some of the things you can do on the home screen are:

  • Click the user icon in the upper right corner to access settings, view your profile, check for updates, sign out, etc.
  • Click “New Meeting” to immediately start a new Zoom meeting
    • In the dropdown below the button, select “Start with video” to start a video meeting, or leave it unselected to start a meeting sharing your computer’s desktop or some other application.
  • Click “Schedule” to set up a future meeting.
  • Click “Join” to join a meeting that has already been started.

On the Meetings tab, you can edit your personal meeting ID, or you can view, start, edit, and delete scheduled meetings, and recorded meetings. Learn more about the Personal Meeting ID(PMI).

Zoom Settings

Access Zoom settings with the user menu in the upper right corner of the client, or with the menu bar when you are in a Zoom meeting.

Meeting Features

Once you have started or joined a meeting, you can perform a variety of actions from the menu bar located at the bottom of the meeting window, such as:

  • Invite more people to join by email, IM, SMS (mobile users) or meeting ID
  • Screen share your desktop or specific application window
  • Group or private chat
  • Record your meeting
  • Manage participants
  • Mute and unmute your audio, and select audio options
  • Stop and start your video
  • Configure settings
  • Leave or end the meeting

Personal Zoom Room

Every Zoom user has a Personal Meeting Room that is permanently reserved for his or her own use. Users can access their Personal Meeting Room using their Personal Meeting ID (PMI), which is a 10-digit number that can be found on their Zoom profile page. The PMI is used to form a Personal Meeting URL, which is the URL that connects to the Personal Meeting Room. For example, if a user’s Personal Meeting ID is the number 5551112222, then the Personal Meeting URL will be https://zoom.us/j/5551112222. This URL can always be used to connect to the particular user’s Personal Meeting Room.

The PMI can be changed to any 10-digit number through the Zoom profile page. Some users change their PMI to a number that is easier to remember, such as their 10-digit telephone number.

Additionally, your Zoom profile allows you to create a “Personal Link,” which is a customized URL for your Personal Meeting Room. The URL takes the form of https://ncsu.zoom.us/my/YOUR_CUSTOM_TEXT_HERE. To edit your Personal Link, go to your Zoom profile page.

Your Personal Meeting Room is ideal for use with people you meet with regularly. However, because it is always accessible with the same Meeting ID and personal link, it should not be used for back-to-back meetings or people you do not meet with regularly. Once a participant has the link to your PMI, they can join it at any time the meeting is in use, unless you lock the meeting or use the Waiting Room feature to admit participants individually.

For more information, see the Zoom Help Center article, “What Is Personal Meeting ID (PMI) And Personal Link?“

Zoom Whiteboard

Zoom allows you to annotate on a whiteboard, but also allows you to annotate any shared screen, such as slides, a document, a web page, etc. It’s a commonly used feature, so it is pretty easy to do.

Sharing your screen (instructions and video):

At around 0:12 of the video above, you can see the screen where you would select “whiteboard.”

Full instructions are below the video, organized by operating system.

Sharing a whiteboard (instructions by OS, no video):

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/205677665-Sharing-a-whiteboard

Tips:

We strongly suggest doing a trial session first, mainly for these two reasons:

1. It is possible that you might have to grant your computer permission to screen share, in which case you would have to quit Zoom and restart it. Better to take care of this ahead of time.

2. Zoom settings for the host must be configured with screen sharing enabled. This setting is enabled by default in NC State’s Zoom, but it is possible for a user to go in and override the setting by turning it off. 

Getting Help with Zoom

Zoom provides a wealth of support through their website at http://support.zoom.us. Some of these resources are linked below.

All NC State users of Zoom can also contact Zoom support directly. Zoom provides 24×7 support via live chat and telephone.

  • Live chat: click the Help icon in the lower right of any page at Zoom’s website. First, enter a search term to get links to help documents, then click the “Contact us” button to chat live with a person at Zoom.
  • Telephone: In the USA, call (888) 799-9666 and select 2 for Support.

For local support, contact DELTA’s LearnTech help desk.

Learning Zoom (video): https://www.lynda.com/Zoom-tutorials/Learning-Zoom/2800328-2.html

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