ConferZoom

College of the Canyons ConferZoom Resources

What is ConferZoom?

ConferZoom is a service for the administrators, staff and faculty of the California Community colleges system, funded by a grant from the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office.

Why use ConferZoom?

ConferZoom allows California Community College educators to use the pro-version of Zoom's video conferencing software with their students for free to hold remote lectures and virtual office hours, take attendance, and more. In a live Zoom session, your students can see and hear you, raise their hand, ask a question, join in a conversation, participate in a poll, and share their screen. You can do all of this, as well as record all sessions in the cloud for easy sharing including transcription, use a virtual background and record screen cast of your screen! Watch the below video for a quick intro to Zoom:

For Faculty: Hosting your first Zoom Meeting

How to Sign Up for ConferZoom (Free Pro Zoom Account)
Download Start-up Guide: How to set up your first Zoom meeting (PDF)
Download Teaching with ConferZoom FAQs for College of the Canyons (PDF)
Download Guidance for Synchronous Classes at College of the Canyons (PDF)

The following two videos (from LBCC) show how to use ConferZoom from the host perspective

For Students: Joining a ConferZoom Meeting

FAQs and Guidance on Recording Synchronous Classes

ConferZoom Video Tutorials:

HowTo Send Meeting Polls ^NEW
Combating Zoom Bombing
New Zoom Security Controls
Zoom Video Tips
Zoom for Office Communication
Zoom Breakout Rooms
Zoom Access and Passwords - 4/24/20
Keep Teaching with ConferZoom - This 90-minute webinar provides an overview of how to get started with Confer Zoom to host virtual class session, including an overview of basic (host controls, chat, share screen, record) and advanced meeting features (polling, whiteboard, breakout rooms).Presented by Michelle Pacansky-Brock, Faculty Mentor CVC-OEI/@ONE. Download this accompanying ConferZoom slide deck.

ConferZoom Resources & FAQs:

Before you can use ConferZoom, you will need to sign up for an account at: http://www.conferzoom.org/ConferZoom/SignUp

If you previously signed up for a free Zoom account with your COC email address, you will need to contact ConferZoom Tech support to request that your Zoom account be converted to ConferZoom.

Registering

Open a web browser and go to: http://conferzoom.org

Click on the "Sign-Up" button:

Fill out the form accordingly then use your firstname.lastname@canyons.edu (ie. john.doe@canyons.edu) email account.

You will get an email from ZOOM confirming your account creation.

Click on "Sign Up with a Password"

You will be asked to create a password.

Now you're ready to sign in.
Use the Zoom Canvas Interface "ConferZoom".
To Enable ConferZoom within Canvas:
1. Enter your Canvas course
2. Click Settings on the course menu
3. Click the Navigation tab
4. Click the 3 dots to the right of ConferNow and select Enable.
5. Click the Save button
6. ConferNow menu item will now appear in your course menu.
Hold Zoom Office Hours

Set up virtual office hours to meet with students using your webcam, share your computer screen or collaborate using Zoom’s whiteboard feature.

Keep the link to the Zoom room you’re using for your students in a central place on your course Canvas site. The main factor to consider when holding office hours or conferences with students via Zoom is your accessibility as an instructor. Make sure they know how to find your “office” (just as you might offer them directions to your office on-campus).
Prevent Zoom Bombing

Zoom bombing and what you can do.

You may have seen recent information in the news regarding 'Zoom Bombing', which quite simply is uninvited participants dropping into meetings uninvited and attempting to disrupt the attendees. Because of the large push to online education, this attempt to disrupt classes can be combated by following the information below.

Instructions on configuring Zoom to prevent "zoom bombing".

Video instructions are also available: Securing your Zoom room.

Open your ConferZoom account settings page and change the following
- https://cccconfer.zoom.us/profile/setting
- Join before host – OFF
- Mute participants upon entry – ON
- Private chat – OFF
- File transfer – OFF
- Allow host to put attendee on hold – ON
- Screen sharing – ON with “Host Only”
- Disable desktop/screen share for users – ON
- Annotation – OFF
- Remote control – OFF
- Allow removed participants to rejoin – OFF
- Waiting room – ON
How to Avoid the “ZoomBomb”

These changes to the default settings are recommended for anyone who is hosting Zoom conferences open to the public or with children attending. Changing these settings will help you keep control of your meeting and focus on your content.

Join before host

The participants could be having a party without you there to monitor.

Recommendation: Turn off

Mute participants upon entry

Barking dogs and crying babies can take over your meeting unintentionally. So can the participant who is singing their favorite heavy metal song at the top of their voice.

You might also consider disallowing participants to unmute themselves. In that case participants can use the “Raise hand” feature or the chat room to indicate when they want to speak. You can manually unmute them.

Recommendation: Turn on

Private chat

The chatroom is one of the key ways to get live feedback and participation with your participants. We want to see all the communication that is happening. Disabling private chat will help tamp down any possible bullying or harassment during your meeting. They can use discord or text messages if they need a backchannel.

Recommendation: Turn off

File transfer

The ability to send files to your participants is very handy for you. Not so helpful if the participants are sending inappropriate (even unintentionally) files/gifs/images to the group. Put your files on Google Drive, Dropbox, 3C Media, etc. and give them download links.

Recommendation: Turn off

Allow host to put attendee on hold

Sometimes participants have environmental consideration that require you to step in and pause them. The participant could have someone enter the room. They could have a TV running behind them. They might have forgotten to dress appropriately…

Recommendation: Turn on

Screen sharing

Your company department meeting is a great place for colleagues to share their business work with the group. Your classroom might not be. Participants can take over the session share and put anything they would like on screen for all in attendance. You can make a participant a co-host if you would like someone else to share their screen.

Recommendation: Turn on “Host Only”

Disable desktop/screen share for users

We don’t need to see the personal photos and information of your co-host when they share. This setting will enable them to share an Application (Powerpoint, Firefox, Chrome, Powershell, etc.) only. You should consider only sharing applications yourself.

Recommendation: Turn on

Annotation

Annotation gives you the ability to “draw” over the screen. It also gives that to your participants. They can draw anything that comes to mind over your presentation, your face, or anything else.

Recommendation: Turn off

Remote control

This is a handy support feature in a 1:1 session. You don’t want participants constantly requesting remote control of your desktop during meetings.

Recommendation: Turn off

Allow removed participants to rejoin

When you kick someone out of your meeting for any reason, they shouldn't’t be able to come back.

Recommendation: Turn off

Waiting room

This is perhaps the most useful feature to help control your meeting or classroom. All participants will enter the waiting room before joining the main session. This allows you to let participants in as you are ready to receive them.

Recommendation: Turn on and customize

Optional – Consider locking your meeting once everyone is in attendance.
You can also access, bookmark, download and print these waiting room recommendations directly

Creating a Welcome Zoom Waiting Room

In response to continued concerns about Zoombombing, it is recommended that faculty, in addition to following our Zoom tips for smooth and secure meetings, also use Zoom’s Waiting Room feature. This enables you to screen participants before you admit them to your meeting. It appears that most Zoombombers are receiving access information from enrolled students, which means a password would not stop those intruders. The Waiting Room will help you prevent any unwanted participation.

Here are some tips to make a Waiting Room work well:
- Enable the Waiting Room on each class meeting.
- Customize the Waiting Room screen to make it inviting/friendly.
- Ask students to sign in early to your Zoom meeting using their real name so that you can admit as many as possible before the official start time.
- Greet students with a chat message to the Waiting Room. You can’t use your audio or video with waiting room participants, and they are not able to respond (they cannot turn on audio, video, or use chat messaging).
  Sample chat message you might have handy for repeated sending to the waiting room: Welcome to our class meeting - I am glad you are here! I will let everyone into the meeting whose name I recognize. If you did not provide your name when joining the meeting, please leave the meeting and re-join using your real name.
- Admit known students. If everyone in the waiting room has a real student name, you can admit all at once; otherwise admit individually.
- If anyone in the Waiting Room has not provided their real name, you may remove them from the Waiting Room.
- If you are not comfortable with the process of admitting latecomers from the Waiting Room once class begins, consider designating a trusted student as a co-host to help with that.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Jim Julius.
Breakout Rooms Overview

Enabling breakout rooms
- Getting Started with Breakout Rooms Zoom Guides
- Pre-assigning participants to breakout rooms
Managing Breakout Rooms
- Managing Breakout Rooms Zoom Guides
Ideas for Non-boring Zoom Breakout Groups

See the below video & slide deck for a list of ideas crowdsourced from Twitter on how to make Zoom breakout groups less boring. For all links and info, visit the slide deck!

Slide Deck
- Guidance for Recording Class Sessions with TechConnect (Confer) Zoom
Zoom Recording How-To Guides:
How to Pull Zoom Attendee Report

Instructions
1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
2. Navigate to Account Management > Reports.
3. In the Usage Reports tab, click Meeting.
  
  A list of upcoming and previous meetings will be generated. You can search by time range or by meeting ID.
4. Next to Report Type, select the Registration Report or Poll Report.
5. In the drop-down menu below Report Type, select one of these options:
  - Search by time range: Select a time range then click Search.
  - Search by meeting ID: Enter the meeting ID and click Search.
6. Click Generate in the last column. You can also use the check boxes to select multiple meeting then click Generate at the top.
  
  Zoom will redirect you to the Report Queues tab where you can download the report as a CSV file.
For more info visit https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/216378603-Generating-Meeting-Reports-for-Registration-and-Polling
Download PDF: Guidance for Synchronous Classes at College of the Canyons

Note: The first part of this guidance recommends practices for making and using instructional video and audio recordings. The second part of this guidance describes best practices around recording class sessions and asking students to use a camera during live class sessions. Appendix 1 includes a student consent form you may wish to use.

Download PDF: FAQs for teaching with ConferZoom (and other synchronous platforms)
Teaching Tips
- Use slides and screen sharing within Zoom to make sure discussion questions are visible to students who may have a slow Internet connection or who may struggle to hear the audio for the initial question. (Look for “Share Screen” at the bottom of your Zoom call.)
  - On your first slide, display an agenda at the start of the class session so that students know what to expect of the shared time together.
- Use the chat (bottom of your screen). See In-Meeting Chat.
- Ask one or two of your students to act as “chat monitors” to voice if there are questions that arise that the instructor has missed.
- Use the chat to troubleshoot technical problems. For example, if a student is having trouble connecting via audio or video, the chat might be a space for you and your students to work together to problem-solve. This may, again, be an opportunity to assign a student to a special role, especially if you have students eager to help on the technical aspect of things.
Download PDF: FAQs for teaching with ConferZoom (and other synchronous platforms)

Production Tips
- Look at the camera as much as possible when you’re teaching, and especially when you are personally addressing a student. It’s tempting to look at your content, or the image of the other person, but it’s better to look directly at your camera!
- When sharing your screen, choose the specific window with the content you are sharing rather than your entire desktop.
- Consider enlarging/zooming in on what you are sharing, especially browser/web pages. If you are preparing slides for viewing via Zoom, be conscious of the content and slide formatting. Don’t sacrifice the size of your content for large slide titles, for example. Images or charts should fill your slide, 1 per slide, rather than cramming multiple images or charts on one slide. Remember that some students may be viewing Zoom on their phones!
- If you are using PowerPoint, set your presentation to the setting where it is “Browsed by an individual (window)” rather than full screen. When you start the slide show, this will help you to continue to easily access Zoom controls. This is also much better than sharing your PowerPoint window in editing mode. You can do something similar in Google Slides by clicking the window resize button on the presentation toolbar at lower left - - after starting the Google slideshow.
- Set your Zoom profile picture. Do turn on your video while teaching, unless bandwidth seems to be an issue (you get the “Your internet connection is unstable” message). Consider using a virtual background image if you don’t like showing your surroundings in your home (or just for a little fun).
- Remember that links you display through screen sharing (e.g. on a PowerPoint) won’t be clickable. Be prepared to share links through Chat while you are talking about links on your screen. Have your links handy in a document for copying and pasting from there to the Zoom chat.
You can access, bookmark, download and print these Zoom Teaching Tips directly

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Jim Julius.
Troubleshooting Tips
- If your microphone is not working, use the phone number listed in the Zoom invitation when you set up a Zoom call. You can use your phone as the microphone and audio source for your call rather than your computer’s built-in microphone if necessary.
- If your Internet connection is slow or lagging, consider temporarily turning off your video stream and only maintaining the audio stream. Sometimes, running the web camera on your computer will use up the Internet’s bandwidth in a way that might make communication challenging. Turning off the video should improve communication quality and consistency.
- If you have earbuds or a headphone set, wear them! Wearing earbuds or headphones will reduce the amount of noise that your computer will pick up during your quality, which will make it easier for your students to hear you. Similarly, you may want to advise your students to wear earbuds or headphones during the call.
- Advise students to mute their microphones if they are not speaking and unmute the microphones when they wish to speak. Students may be joining Zoom calls from all kinds of different locations, many of which may create background noise that could be distracting. Encourage students to mute themselves if they’re not speaking to minimize unnecessary or distracting background noise. Using the “raise hand” feature or simply seeing the microphone unmuted will give the group a visual cue for when a student wishes to speak.
- Check the “chat” space for student questions and contributions. Some students may not have working microphones and, therefore, may be unable to contribute via voice. The chat room is a good place for students to contribute, ask questions, and be involved.
- Check the Zoom Help Center
Accessibility Tips
- Zoom's automatic captions are visible if you record a Zoom session. Make sure to check the box that says 'Enable Cloud Recording' so your students can access a recording of the session that includes with captions.
- For students who are blind or have low visibility, narrate the material that you’re displaying visually on the screen. Just as you might read materials aloud in class, read screen material that you share on-screen just in case students are not able to see essential text.