This article covers a few different popular uses of Zoom for remote instruction, and answers frequently-asked-questions about using Zoom in these scenarios.

Contents:

Using Zoom for Virtual Office Hours
- Personal Meeting Rooms and IDs
- Waiting Rooms
- Schedule Recurring Meetings
Using Zoom for One-on-One Meetings
- Registration for Meetings
- Set Meeting Password
How to Write on the Screen During a Zoom Meeting
- Whiteboard in Zoom
- Using Hardware to Share Better Handwriting
Using Zoom for Student or Group Presentations
- Best Practices
- Sharing Screens
- Share Recordings

Note: There is no major difference in Pitt Zoom between a student account and a teacher account. All users have the ability to schedule Zoom meetings, and what determines whether someone is a Host/Co-Host or a Participant in a meeting is simply whether or not they were the one that scheduled the meeting originally. (Hosts and Co-Hosts can pass hosting responsibilities to any Participant once a meeting has been started--see this page for more information on being a Host.)

New features may be added to Zoom in a future update. To keep up to date on the latest news in Zoom, check out Zoom's release notes and select any version that you use.

You can also submit a help request to Pitt IT if you wish to use the Zoom Webinar feature.

Using Zoom for Office Hours

You can set up your office hours in several different ways. You can either use your Personal Meeting ID or schedule recurring meetings (each meeting will have a unique URL).

Personal Meeting Rooms and IDs

Your Personal Meeting Room is a virtual meeting room permanently reserved for you that you can access with your Personal Meeting ID (PMI). You can start instant meetings with your PMI, or you can schedule a meeting that uses your PMI.

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 info on PMIs, please visit this page.

Start a meeting using PMI

You can either choose to use your PMI when scheduling a meeting or simply start a meeting directly using your Personal Meeting Room.

You can start a meeting in your Personal Meeting Room by going to your Personal Meeting Room Tab:

screenshot of personal meeting rooms tab highlighted in a red rectangle with a red arrow pointing to it

Or when creating a normal meeting, choose to use your PMI for the meeting ID.

screenshot of zoom meeting options with use PMI option highlighted in a red rectangle

Edit meeting ID to use PMI
- Choose the meeting you would like to edit and click Edit Meeting

screenshot of edit meeting button highlighted in a red rectangle

- Check the box to Use your Personal Meeting ID

screenshot of zoom meeting options with use PMI option highlighted in a red rectangle

Waiting Rooms

The Waiting Room feature allows the host to control when a participant joins the meeting. As the meeting host, you can admit attendees one by one or hold all attendees in the waiting room and admit them all at once. You can send all participants to the waiting room when joining your meeting or only guests, participants who are not on your Zoom account or are not signed in. For more information on Waiting Rooms, please visit this page.

Participants will see the following screen when joining a meeting with Waiting Room enabled:

screenshot of message "meeting host will let you in soon"

Schedule Recurring Meetings

You can schedule recurring meetings by checking the box next to Recurring meeting and determine the days and times when you would like the meeting to occur.

screenshot of recurring meeting options with recurring meeting checkbox highlighted in a red rectangle

Using Zoom for One-on-One Meetings

Registration for Meetings

Scheduling a meeting that requires registration will allow you to have your participants register with their e-mail, name, other questions, and custom questions. You can also generate meeting registration reports if you want to download a list of people that registered. For more information on registration for Zoom meetings, please visit this page.

Note: Meetings with registration enabled cannot use your Personal Meeting Room ID

If you have chosen to have recurring meetings, you will see additional options for registration for recurring meetings appear after checking the "Required" box.

Save your meeting and scroll down the page to your Registration Options. Clicking on View (1) allows you to see/search current meeting registrants, cancel their registration, and resend a confirmation email. Click on Edit (2) to change your registration options.

screenshot of registration tab with sections 1-2 highlighted in red rectangles

In Registration (1), choose between automatically or manually approving each registrant. Under Questions (2) you can determine which contact information you would like to collect from each registrant. You can create Custom Questions (3) that attendees must answer upon registering. When you are finished click Save All (4).

screenshot of registration options with sections 1-4 highlighted in red rectangles

Set a Meeting Password

Meetings and can require passwords for an added layer of security. Passwords can be set at the individual meeting level or can be enabled at the user, group, or account level for all meetings. Account owners and admins can also lock password settings, to require passwords for all meetings on their account. For more information on Zoom meeting passwords, please visit this page.

screenshot of meeting options with require password highlighted in a red rectangle

How to Write on the Screen During a Zoom Meeting

When you share your screen in a Zoom meeting, you have the option to share a whiteboard.

screenshot of screens available for sharing with whiteboard highlighted in a red rectangle

You can share a new window by clicking on the New Share (1) button. Click the Whiteboard button (2) to quickly toggle the pen tool that is used to write on the white space. You have several annotation tools (3) at your disposal and if you wish to Clear the space, you can choose to clear only your annotations, only participant's annotations, or all annotations. Click on the More button to find more options and hotkeys including (dis)allowing participants to annotate or to show the names of the annotators (4).

screenshot of UI using whiteboard with sections 1-4 highlighted in red rectangles

For advice on how to use the hardware you already have on hand to share handwriting on Zoom that is better than you writing with your mouse, see our guide to Creating Tablet Capture Videos.

Using Zoom for Student or Group Presentations

Best Practices

BEFORE RECORDING OR SHARING A RECORDING:
- In order to facilitate the free exchange of ideas during lectures, if a faculty member intends to record their lecture with student participation, they must advise the students, via e-mail and at the beginning of the lecture, that the lecture, including their participation, is being recorded. Students should not be required to participate in the recorded conversation and should be encouraged to ask questions off-line. Further, the recorded lecture may be used by the faculty member and the registered students only for internal class purposes and only during the term in which the course is being offered. Faculty who have questions should contact faculty@pitt.edu.
Record to the Cloud
- Recording to the cloud makes it easier to share the recording.
- For long term storage, we recommend downloading your recording to your personal computer and keep it locally, or upload it to Panopto.
- Our cloud storage capacity with Zoom is significant, but not infinite. If you want to share and view your Zoom cloud recordings beyond a semester or two in the future, you should download the recording, upload it to Panopto and then delete it from Zoom.
Clearly communicate
- Talking cues through video conferencing is difficult, so you have to be more literal.
- e.g. “I will now mute myself and Sarah will share her screen and go through our resources.”

Screen Share and Advanced Sharing Options

All meeting room participants can share their screen (in this way presenters can share PowerPoint slides as they talk, or an instructor can demonstrate the use of a piece of software), but the host controls who and how many people can share their screens at a given time.

Click on the up arrow (1) next to the Share Screen button. You can quickly toggle between allowing one or multiple participants to share their screen at a time (2). The advanced sharing options here (3) are set by default if you have not configured your meeting sharing settings before. You can disallow participants completely from being able to share their screen or only allow the host to start sharing when someone else is sharing.

screenshot of zoom advanced screen sharing options with sections 1-3 highlighted in red rectangles

Share Cloud Recordings

Log into pitt.zoom.us with your Pitt Credentials.

screenshot of pitt.zoom.us recordings page with sections 1-3 highlighted in red rectangles

1. Go to Recordings

2. Go to Cloud Recordings

3. Find the recording you want and click the Share button.

4. If you only want to have people with authenticated Pitt accounts to view your recording, choose to share your recording so that Only authenticated users can view. Choose other share settings. See this page for more info on On-Demand Recordings. Click the Copy to Clipboard button.

screenshot of zoom cloud sharing options with "only authenticated users can view" and "Copy to clipboard" are highlighted in red rectangles

5. Paste shareable link to:

- Blackboard
  - Discussion Board
  - Wiki
- Canvas
  - Discussions
  - Pages
- Email

If you want to make sure that ALL of your cloud recordings are only viewable to authenticated users, you can change your share settings at your account level as well.

Log into pitt.zoom.us with your Pitt credentials. Go to your Settings (1) and then Recording (2).

screenshot of zoom settings with "Settings" and "Recordings" highlighted in red rectangles

Scroll down until you see the option for Only authenticated users can view cloud recordings and make sure the toggle is to the right and blue so that the setting is turned on. This allows anyone who is signed in through Pitt credentials to view your video and prompts anyone who is NOT signed in to sign into Zoom with their Pitt credentials.

screenshot of only authenticated users toggle highlighted in a red rectangle