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Brightspace Tip #290: Using Zoom for Class Meetings

Due to the surge of the COVID-19 omicron variant, the university announced plans to start the semester with in-person classes shifting to meeting remotely. This unplanned semester start may force you to rethink how you will approach teaching and learning during this disruption.

When classes start next week, many faculty will move to meeting with their classes remotely at the regularly assigned class time. One question related to teaching remotely that we have been asked is about using Zoom for class meetings. In particular, some faculty want to know if they can use their personal Zoom accounts for class meetings. While there is no university policy that says you cannot, we suggest you use your XULA Zoom account for several reasons.

Zoom link identified in NavBar

If you create a meeting in your personal Zoom account and provide your students with the Zoom link they will be able to attend the class meeting. However, an advantage to setting up the Zoom class meetings inside your course is that this can force your students to login to the course for each class meeting. This is helpful in recording their attendance. To have attendance automatically recorded in Brightspace, students need to access course content from your course for that day. Any activity inside the course is acceptable for recording attendance. It could be a link they click on, submit an assignment, take a quiz, participate in a discussion, etc. Even just clicking on the "Content" menu link in your course will count for attendance.

You must activate your XULA Zoom account in order to use Zoom in Brightspace. Activation is a one-time action on your part.

We have a number of Zoom resources that you may find helpful:

Did you know you can view Zoom usage reports to see the participants who attended the meeting and the amount of time they spent in the meeting? Here’s a link to how-to that explains how to view your Zoom usage reports.

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call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.

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