Customizing Your Zoom Settings and Features for a Variety of Scenarios
Important note: processing time for Zoom recordings has been taking 24 hours or more in some cases.
Will you be using Zoom to teach a class of fewer than 50 students? More than 50 students? To hold online office hours? You will not be surprised to learn that the settings and features that work best in these teaching scenarios differ.
The first group of settings are those to consider when scheduling a Zoom meeting. These settings are found both in the Zoom desktop client or on your Zoom web profile > Schedule a Meeting. Note you can schedule recurring meetings or repurpose any meeting you schedule as a template for future meetings.
For one-on-one meetings with students (office hours)
- Registration: Not required. In this case, requiring registration would add complexity with no benefit.
- Meeting ID: Generated ID, not Personal Meeting ID. Reserving your Personal Meeting ID for just-in-time meetings with close acquaintances is useful.
- Video: Off for Host and Participant, allowing hosts and participants to choose when/if to share video.
- Audio: Both Telephone and Computer Audio, allowing participants to choose which is more appropriate given their overall network connectivity.
- Meeting Options:
- Join Before Host: No. This setting and Enable Waiting Room (below) will not work if both are enabled.
- Mute Participants Upon Entry: Yes. Permits participants to choose when to unmute themselves.
- Enable Waiting Room: Yes. Essential for handling sequential one-on-one, drop-in meetings. Students are added to waiting room list in the order they arrive. Zoom Help Center: Waiting Room.
- Only Authenticated Users Can Join:Yes, if all your attendees have UNC Zoom accounts; No, if you are expecting attendees from outside of the University.
- Record the Meeting Automatically: No. Recording one-on-one conversations with students is not recommended.
- Alternative Hosts: No. If you have teaching assistants, it would be more straightforward for them to schedule their own Zoom meetings for office hours.
For classes of fewer than 50 students
- Registration: Not required. In this case, requiring registration would add complexity with no benefit.
- Meeting ID: Generated ID, not Personal Meeting ID. Reserving your Personal Meeting ID for just-in-time meetings with close acquaintances is useful.
- Video: Off for Host and Participant, allowing hosts and participants to choose when/if to share video.
- Audio: Both Telephone and Computer Audio, allowing participants to choose which is more appropriate given their overall network connectivity.
- Meeting Options:
- Join Before Host: Yes. Early-arriving students may appreciate the opportunity to talk among themselves before class begins.
- Mute Participants Upon Entry: Yes. Permits participants to choose when to unmute themselves.
- Enable Waiting Room: No. The waiting room doesn’t give early-arriving students the aforementioned opportunity to talk among themselves before class begins.
- Only Authenticated Users Can Join: Yes, if all your attendees have UNC Zoom accounts; No, if you are expecting attendees from outside of the University.
- Record the Meeting Automatically: No. Recording would start as soon as the first student enters the session. If you are concerned about forgetting to record the session and would prefer it be recorded automatically, please refer to the recommendations for larger classes, below.
- Alternative Hosts: Enter the @email.unc.edu addresses (not any other variation on UNC email addresses) for any co-instructors or teaching assistants. If an individual has not yet created a UNC Zoom account, attempting to add them will generate an error message that their email address “is not associated with a Zoom account.”
- Faculty and students associated with professional schools are in separate school-level sub-accounts. You cannot make someone from a different subaccount (professional school) an alternate host. Zoom Help Center: Alternative Host.
For classes of more than 50 students
- Registration: Not required. In this case, requiring registration would add complexity with no benefit.
- Meeting ID: Generated ID, not Personal Meeting ID. Reserving your Personal Meeting ID for just-in-time meetings with close acquaintances is useful.
- Video: Off for Host and Participant, allowing hosts and participants to choose when/if to share video.
- Audio: Both Telephone and Computer Audio, allowing participants to choose which is more appropriate given their overall network connectivity.
- Meeting Options:
- Join Before Host: No. With large classes, the results are likely to be confusing to students.
- Mute Participants Upon Entry: Yes. Permits participants to choose when to unmute themselves.
- Enable Waiting Room: No. Students who enter the session late will need to be admitted, taking time and attention from other matters.
- Only Authenticated Users Can Join:Yes, if all your attendees have UNC Zoom accounts; No, if you are expecting attendees from outside of the University.
- Record the Meeting Automatically: Before you check/uncheck the option to record automatically, consider if your class sessions might involve private conversations at the beginning, during, or end of class that should not be recorded.
- If you choose to record automatically, also select Record to the Cloud. Cloud recordings are transcribed automatically, and these results can be improved with editing. Also, start and end times for recording playback can be adjusted. Note, however, that Zoom does not provide the option to remove unwanted clips from middle sections of the recording. It may be helpful to assign a teaching assistant as an “alternative host” (see below) to have responsibility for pausing, resuming, and ending recording as instructional judgment directs.
Note: Professional schools may have limits on how long cloud recordings are available. Check with your professional school’s IT department for details. - If you leave this option unchecked, you run the risk of forgetting to record the session; however, having at least one “alternative host” (see below) in charge of recording helps mitigate this risk. Wait to begin recording once the class session begins in earnest and pause, resume, and end recording as instructional judgment directs.
- Zoom Help Center: Starting a Cloud Recording; Cloud Recording Playback.
- If you choose to record automatically, also select Record to the Cloud. Cloud recordings are transcribed automatically, and these results can be improved with editing. Also, start and end times for recording playback can be adjusted. Note, however, that Zoom does not provide the option to remove unwanted clips from middle sections of the recording. It may be helpful to assign a teaching assistant as an “alternative host” (see below) to have responsibility for pausing, resuming, and ending recording as instructional judgment directs.
- Alternative Hosts: Enter the @email.unc.edu addresses (not any other variation on UNC email addresses) for any co-instructors or teaching assistants. If an individual has not yet created a UNC Zoom account, attempting to add them will generate an error message that their email address “is not associated with a Zoom account.” Faculty and students associated with professional schools are in separate school-level sub-accounts. You cannot make someone from a different subaccount (professional school) an alternate host. Zoom Help Center: Alternative Host.
Settings and Tools to Consider for Any Instructional Context
To simplify the meeting interface, several features have been enabled or disabled that you may want to modify before using Zoom for instruction.
Changes to consider making on your Zoom Settings webpage:
- Private Chat. Disable if you would prefer students not use in-meeting chat to hold private conversations with each other during class. Disabling private chat is recommended for all instructional activities. Zoom help: Zoom Help Center: In-meeting Chat.
- Co-host. Turning on this feature is essential if you teach with a team. You can assign co-host privileges during the meeting. Important: if another member or members of your teaching team will need to start a meeting that you’ve scheduled, edit the meeting, and add them as Alternative hosts with their @email.unc.edu addresses. If an individual has not yet created a UNC Zoom account, attempting to add them will generate an error message that their email address “is not associated with a Zoom account.” Faculty and students associated with professional schools are in separate school-level sub-accounts. You cannot make someone from a different subaccount (professional school) an alternate host.
- Zoom Help Center: Host and Co-host controls in a meeting; Managing Participants in a Meeting.
- Polling. Zoom has a polling feature, which is rudimentary in comparison with Poll Everywhere and requires you to develop all polling questions in advance of the meeting. Turn on if you’d like or leave off and use Zoom to share a Poll Everywhere poll in either a PowerPoint slide or browser window. Zoom Help Center: Polling for meetings.
- Show Zoom windows during screen share. We suggest keeping this off unless your class plans include an explicit demonstration of Zoom. Zoom Help Center: Sharing your screen.
- Who can [screen] share: All Participants. Who can start sharing when someone else is sharing: Host Only. This pair of settings supports the potential for greater interaction with student-driven content while retaining better control at the outset. While a meeting is in session, you can adjust these settings from the Zoom meeting control toolbar. Zoom Help Center: Sharing your screen.
- Annotation. Turning on annotation adds a drawing layer over the content you or participants share. Even if you don’t draw, you may find the Spotlight (virtual laser pointer) useful in drawing students’ attention to details. As with screen sharing, you as meeting host can control annotation settings during meetings as needed. Zoom Help Center: Using annotation tools on a shared screen or whiteboard.
- Whiteboard. Turning on the whiteboard feature is particularly useful if you use classroom whiteboards, even more so when you have a tablet computer connected to your Zoom meeting. If you use the Zoom whiteboard, you may want to select Auto save whiteboard content when sharing is stopped. Zoom Help Center: Using annotation tools on a shared screen or whiteboard.
- Nonverbal feedback. Turning on this feature is useful for oral discussions in medium to large classes. Students can indicate they would like to speak–and for you to unmute them–by clicking the raised hand icon. Zoom Help Center: Nonverbal Feedback during Meetings; Managing Participants in a Meeting.
- Breakout room. If students work in groups during face-to-face classes, consider enabling this option. If students work in pre-assigned groups, also enable Allow hosts to assign participants to breakout rooms when scheduling. Zoom Help Center: Getting Started with Breakout Rooms.
Securing Zoom Cloud Recordings
To support greater class access to course materials, we recommend that you record your Zoom class sessions and share links to recordings via Sakai or preferred communications tool. However, there is a small risk that students could share these recording links with someone outside of the class. To help mitigate this risk, consider reminding your students to not share recording links and adjusting these Zoom recording settings to conserve student privacy:
- Record active speaker with shared screen. Yes. Students who have their video on during the session would appear on screen only if they are unmuted.
- Record gallery view with shared screen. No. At least some students who have video on during the session will appear on screen, regardless of whether they are speaking.
- Record active speaker, gallery view and shared screen separately. No, unless you plan to delete the gallery view recording. (Note: this option uses more cloud storage.)
- Save chat messages from the meeting/webinar. No. Enabling this option allows viewers to see participants’ names. With this option disabled, Zoom will automatically download a .txt file of the chat transcript to your local computer’s Documents/Zoom folder. Note that this transcript also includes participants’ names as well as any private messages you’ve exchanged, so you will need to edit the transcript to remove if you plan to share the transcript with others.
- Display participants’ names in the recording. No.
- Only authenticated users can access the recording: Yes > UNC-CH only (Default).
- Recording consent. No. Students who do not consent will not be allowed to participate in the meeting.