Ed Tech Q & A

[spork]

^ Thanks for all this advice everyone. It's really helpful. I have taught asynchronous graduate courses for years, but I'm finding the need to include a lot of synchronous online components for undergraduate courses to be somewhat unfamiliar territory.

[spork]

Regarding Zoom: I found out that the Zoom LTI integration with Canvas does not include Zoom's breakout room feature. So anyone who wants to use breakout rooms will need to schedule meetings with Zoom's desktop application or via web browser.

Don't know if the same is true for Blackboard or other LMS platforms.

[mythbuster]

The Zoom integration into Canvas is problematic at best. Our instructional tech folks are really urging us to limit entrance to our Zoom meetings to "authenticated users". This means that they have signed in to our university Zoom account, and therefore we can be sure they are at least nominally affiliated. However, signing into Canvas and then using the zoom link integrated into Canvas does not authenticate. You have to sign into Zoom separately.  Even though the logins are the same user name and password on both. It's frustrating.

[mamselle]

Still better than being zoom-bombed by some inane, cackling kid, wishing your class dead and naming the instructor by title and name.

Our folk dance class had this happen the 3rd week this past summer term.

Most unpleasant.

M.

[spork]

The Zoom integration into Canvas is problematic at best. Our instructional tech folks are really urging us to limit entrance to our Zoom meetings to "authenticated users". This means that they have signed in to our university Zoom account, and therefore we can be sure they are at least nominally affiliated. However, signing into Canvas and then using the zoom link integrated into Canvas does not authenticate. You have to sign into Zoom separately.  Even though the logins are the same user name and password on both. It's frustrating.

Our IT department was conveniently ignorant of all of this. I'm the one doing the investigating as the faculty person very nominally -- as in, I have a title but no budget and no authority -- in charge of faculty development. For much of the summer I've been burning bridges with IT on approximately a weekly basis. This is going to be another burned bridge.

[ciao_yall]

Still better than being zoom-bombed by some inane, cackling kid, wishing your class dead and naming the instructor by title and name.

Our folk dance class had this happen the 3rd week this past summer term.

Most unpleasant.

M.

We got zoom-bombed by a whole bunch of Eastern European gamers. It was like being in a Russian disco!

[mythbuster]

We had our first Zoom discussion section today. It worked reasonably well, but I'd love people's suggestions on three issues.
1) We started with me giving an introduction and then breaking students into breakout rooms to discuss the problem of the day. For this I had a PowerPoint slide that I screen shared to the groups as a whole. Is there a way to screen share to everyone once they break out into groups as well? I ended up retyping the questions to be discussed into the chat as not everyone was paying attention when the slide was presented.
2) What is the best way to survey progress once they are in breakout rooms? I tried joining groups from time to time, but me joining instantly killed any discussion that was occurring. Is there any less intrusive way to know if group 5 is totally lost. I need the ability to overhear and eavesdrop, essentially.
3) Is there a way to get the memberships of the breakout groups after the meeting is over and closed? I assigned randomly today, but would like to use those same assignments for the next few weeks.
Overall, I was shocked at how well it worked. One student even called it "fun". So I'll take that!

[doc700]

We had our first Zoom discussion section today. It worked reasonably well, but I'd love people's suggestions on three issues.
1) We started with me giving an introduction and then breaking students into breakout rooms to discuss the problem of the day. For this I had a PowerPoint slide that I screen shared to the groups as a whole. Is there a way to screen share to everyone once they break out into groups as well? I ended up retyping the questions to be discussed into the chat as not everyone was paying attention when the slide was presented.
2) What is the best way to survey progress once they are in breakout rooms? I tried joining groups from time to time, but me joining instantly killed any discussion that was occurring. Is there any less intrusive way to know if group 5 is totally lost. I need the ability to overhear and eavesdrop, essentially.
3) Is there a way to get the memberships of the breakout groups after the meeting is over and closed? I assigned randomly today, but would like to use those same assignments for the next few weeks.
Overall, I was shocked at how well it worked. One student even called it "fun". So I'll take that!

To my understanding, here are the answers:
1) Yes, anything you share is in the main room is not there for the students when they go into the breakout.  I think you could also post the slides or discussion on your Canvas site and then get the students to access it before you put them into the groups.  Or you could put it in the chat as you propose.  But I think personally this is a glitch of Zoom.  I do physics problems so I am sure that the students have a worksheet with the problems from Canvas before they go into the breakout room since sharing it in the main session wont help.

2) This is tricky.  The other issue with popping in and out is that it takes a lot of time for you to do (at least on my computer it takes seconds to go between rooms).  It was suggested to me that the students write a summary of their discussion on a Google doc.  Once again, you have links to all the google docs in Canvas (maybe with the questions at the top) and then have them open the doc.  On your computer, you have each doc open in a separate tab so that you can scroll through and see their summary.

3) I don't know how you get the groups.  You could screenshot the breakout assignment on your computer when you are doing it but otherwise I don't know how to after the class figure it out.  But depending on your course size, its not trivial to re-assign them to the same rooms.  The most efficient way would be to assign everyone a group number.  Then in the Zoom meeting have them rename themself "1 - Their name".  When you go to make breakouts, you still need to manually assign everyone but they will all be organized by numbers so it will be quick to do.  If you have a TA or someone else they can make the breakouts while you do the first 10 minutes of class so that when its time the rooms are assigned and you just need to open them.   Otherwise you will spend several minutes assembling groups and the students will be waiting around.

[AmLitHist]

Thank you for starting this thread, Spork.  I've taught asynchronously online since 2005 and use the usual mix of in-classroom tech, but with our move of F2F classes to Live Virtual Lectures (LVL), the tech aspects have had me surprisingly freaked out

Admin prefers us to use Blackboard Collaborate, but I'm using Zoom instead.  Zoom is far less clunky to use.  I've been amused during Service Week Collaborate meetings this week:  without fail, as the moderator is telling us how reliable and user-friendly and stable Collaborate is, we can watch the screen and see people (and often, myself) getting kicked out of the meeting.  (For those meetings held via Zoom, there haven't been any problems.)

For those who don't know:  a basic/free Zoom account limits your meeting times to 40 minutes.  Use your .edu email to set up an education account, which allows longer meetings.  (Someone said this week that this feature is going to go away--has anyone here heard the same.) I'm also considering just ponying up the $15/month myself for a Pro account so that I know I'll have consistent access to the expanded features--one less thing to stress over.

[Cheerful]

I'm also considering just ponying up the $15/month myself for a Pro account so that I know I'll have consistent access to the expanded features--one less thing to stress over.

Paying to do your own job?  Academics do a lot of this, unfortunately.  Hopefully, faculty at your college will push for adequate tech support in order to deliver excellent teaching and learning. You should not have to pay $15 a month to teach.  Best wishes.

Edit: Zoom is beloved at my U and we've not been informed that meeting length will be scaled back for our edu accounts.

[paddington_bear]

Here's another Zoom question (not for classroom use but for lectures/presentations)...... I've attended meetings/webinars this summer where I receive a recording of the meeting after. Zoom itself does not offer this "service"; I've seen the MailChimp or Constant Contact logo at the bottom of the email containing the link to the recording, so I'm assuming that some meeting organizers areusing those services to distribute the recording via their mail merge process. I don't know what other organizers are using.  Neither I nor my university have a MailChimp or other account to do this, so what's the best way to, for example, correspond to those who have registered for a meeting or to send the recording after the meeting is over. Can someone recommend a good mail merge add-on for Google? (I've emailed Zoom about this and they've confirmed that they don't do it and didn't offer any suggestions.)

[polly_mer]

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/203741855-Cloud-recording to record.

Then, download the recording and use any email program you like to distribute the recording.  You can even just post to the class webpage or LMS.

Mailchimp has a free option and just plain Gmail lets you bcc a list of recipients.

[Bonnie]

We had our first Zoom discussion section today. It worked reasonably well, but I'd love people's suggestions on three issues.
1) We started with me giving an introduction and then breaking students into breakout rooms to discuss the problem of the day. For this I had a PowerPoint slide that I screen shared to the groups as a whole. Is there a way to screen share to everyone once they break out into groups as well? I ended up retyping the questions to be discussed into the chat as not everyone was paying attention when the slide was presented.
2) What is the best way to survey progress once they are in breakout rooms? I tried joining groups from time to time, but me joining instantly killed any discussion that was occurring. Is there any less intrusive way to know if group 5 is totally lost. I need the ability to overhear and eavesdrop, essentially.
3) Is there a way to get the memberships of the breakout groups after the meeting is over and closed? I assigned randomly today, but would like to use those same assignments for the next few weeks.
Overall, I was shocked at how well it worked. One student even called it "fun". So I'll take that!

1) I have a google doc with directions for each breakout room activity. I share the link tot he google doc in the main room chat before I send them off to breakouts. So far this is working well.
2)This does not work for discussion, but for activities where they are producing something, again, google. Yesterday I had five breakouts discussing and generating recommendations for shared agreements. I made a google slide template for each group. As they discussed, they created content for their slides. I was able to monitor the google slide docs and pop into rooms that did not seem to be making progress.
3) I have not figured out a way to do this through Zoom. But, for instance, on the google slides, I had them put their names on the first slide. That gives me group membership.

[spork]

^ I plan on using a similar method. In Zoom, what's created or made visible in the main meeting does not transfer over into breakout rooms. I'm setting up Google docs that include prompts and the students in each breakout room will have a Google doc for collaborative writing. Ideally students will be communicating with their teammates in the breakout room while writing in the Google doc. I'll screen share each group's Google doc when the whole class reconvenes.

As for using Zoom to recreate the membership of breakout rooms that were originally randomly populated, after the meeting has been ended, I don't think that can be done.

For my Fall courses, I am using Zoom's "Recurring meeting"/"No Fixed Time" option because I want to post just a single link in Canvas for all of a course's class sessions over the entire semester. This is my work-around for not being able to schedule Zoom meetings from within the Canvas because the LTI doesn't allow breakout rooms. But I don't know yet if "Recurring meeting"/"No Fixed Time" prevents me from pre-assigning students to breakout rooms. I might need to keep a list handy so that I can manually populate breakout rooms with the students during each class when its time for a group activity. Since I have a maximum of 30 students for each course I'm teaching, this task doesn't look overly burdensome. Assigning participants to breakout rooms in Zoom is a very simple point and click process. It will probably be even easier if I form the student teams alphabetically by students' names.

Here's another Zoom question (not for classroom use but for lectures/presentations)...... I've attended meetings/webinars this summer where I receive a recording of the meeting after. Zoom itself does not offer this "service"; I've seen the MailChimp or Constant Contact logo at the bottom of the email containing the link to the recording, so I'm assuming that some meeting organizers areusing those services to distribute the recording via their mail merge process. I don't know what other organizers are using.  Neither I nor my university have a MailChimp or other account to do this, so what's the best way to, for example, correspond to those who have registered for a meeting or to send the recording after the meeting is over. Can someone recommend a good mail merge add-on for Google? (I've emailed Zoom about this and they've confirmed that they don't do it and didn't offer any suggestions.)

I think Polly's suggestion is probably the easiest solution if you are using Zoom outside of your LMS. At my university, recordings of Zoom meetings that were scheduled from inside Canvas will supposedly get stored in the Canvas course shell -- or at least a link to each recording will automatically appear in the course shell's Zoom page, don't know where the actual video file is located. But as I mention above, breakout rooms are a must-have. And I'm not going to bother recording any class session anyway. Most of the value in my courses comes from discussion and interaction between students. I don't want to encourage non-participation because students think watching a recording is more convenient.

[mamselle]

It may be OK now with the enhanced security, but the long-standing, same-sign-in post was what got us (the university-based folk dance class I've been attending) Zoom-bombed.

We had to go to a weekly sign-up to avoid it becoming possible for hackers to see the link and sign in. We also now have a gate-keeper to admit folks.

But I realize things have moved along since early June, so maybe that or your school's security will be enough.

Just a caveat.

M.