Zoom for Teaching

What is Zoom?

Zoom is BU’s preferred video conferencing platform. Zoom provides a platform for online collaboration and meetings, pairing full video and audio conferencing capabilities with content sharing and cloud recording.

Who Can Use It?

Login to Zoom Meetings to create your account. Students, faculty, and staff automatically receive fully licensed accounts.

Download the Zoom Client for Meetings from the Zoom Download Center.

Ways to Use Zoom in the Classroom

  • In approved hybrid or synchronous online classes, the Zoom meeting is the classroom–or at least a significant part of it. Use Zoom to deliver lectures, facilitate discussions, or conduct workshops.
  • You can share specific content with students by sharing your screen. You can show your whole desktop, specific applications, or from secondary devices such as a document camera or iPad.
  • Use breakout rooms to split students into separate rooms for small group discussions or group activities. You can even pre-assign breakout rooms ahead of time.
  • You can record your Zoom classes to either share synchronous lectures with students for review (or for asynchronous students to access) or you can record lectures on your own to offer asynchronous content for students to review.
  • Students can use non-verbal feedback and reactions as a way of responding to direct questions from the instructor.

Features

  • Host meetings with up to 300 participants for as long as you would like
  • Integrate Zoom with your existing Outlook or Google calendar
  • Schedule Zoom meetings from Outlook or Google using the Zoom for Outlook or Zoom for Google Calendar Add-ins
  • Share screen, assign participants to breakout rooms, deploy polls, and share a virtual whiteboard (among many other features)
  • Record meetings locally or to the cloud for easy distribution.
  • Utilize the text chat feature to encourage alternative modes of participation or to share links directly with students in real time.
  • Join meetings via a computer, mobile devices, phones, or H.323/SIP-capable telepresence devices
  • Record lectures, training sessions or student presentations and upload to MyMedia to access over multiple semester.

Advantages

Zoom makes it easy for you to create and share meeting details with your students. As host you can customize the meeting settings to suit your specific needs.

Through the Gallery View you can arrange participants’ video tiles in whatever order you desire. As host you can Spotlight Speakers for your entire meeting or force students to view the order of the video tiles on your screen.

You can also record your meetings or Zoom classes locally or to the cloud for easy sharing with students.

Zoom also has a Blackboard integration, which allows you to schedule and start meetings directly within your Blackboard site. This makes your Zoom meetings available for students to view in the Blackboard course site. Other meetings scheduled outside of the Blackboard site will not appear. You can also make cloud recordings available to students directly within Blackboard.

Technology Support for Zoom

EdTech offers trainings on using Zoom for classroom purposes. For more information or to schedule a one-on-one consultation, email the EdTech team via AskEdTech@bu.edu.

Teaching Guides & Resources

Email the Center for Teaching & Learning and schedule an appointment today ctl@bu.edu.