Tips for Zoom

Using Zoom for Lectures, Office Hours and Meetings

Zoom combines video conferencing, group messaging and document sharing in one platform that can host up to 300 students. It is integrated with Canvas and can be accessed in the left-hand navigation of your Canvas course, making it easier for students to access all coursework, communication and online lecture delivery platforms. 

Simply log into Canvas and access Zoom in the left-hand navigation.

Step 1: Get Started and Sign Into UT Zoom

Step 2: Set Up and Record Your Lecture

Important Note: Instructors MUST record all lectures (just press the record button in Zoom before starting a lecture) and then make their recordings available to the class immediately after live delivery. Due to students living in different time zones and potential internet bandwidth limitations, it is critical that every instructor allows his/her students to participate both synchronously and asynchronously in all lectures.  

Step 3: Host Meetings

Hosting a Zoom Meeting and Tracking Attendance - If you create and host a Zoom session, you can go to utexas.zoom.us to view attendees of your session. Note: You must be the creator of the Zoom meeting in order to view the attendance report. 

  1. Click on the Reports tab on the left side of your screen
  2. Scroll over to center of page and click on Usage
  3. Select date range for your report previous meeting
  4. Click on search button and all meetings will appear for your date range
  5. Scroll over to participants column of the selected meeting that you want and click on export to download the report in Excel format

Step 4: Encourage Student Engagement

Zoom offers additional functionality to foster student engagement (active learning):

Using Breakout Rooms in Zoom

Group Breakouts Using Zoom Breakout Rooms

Zoom Breakout Rooms allow you to split your Zoom meeting in up to 50 separate sessions. The meeting host can choose to split the participants of the meeting into these separate sessions automatically or manually, and can switch between sessions at any time.

Using Polling in Zoom

Zoom Polling allows you to create single choice or multiple choice polling questions for your meetings. You will be able to launch the poll during your meeting and gather the responses from your attendees. You also have the ability to download a report of polling after the meeting. 

Step 5: Track Attendance

Creators of Zoom meetings can view attendance reports.

To view attendees of your session, Go to utexas.zoom.us .Click on the Reports tab on the left side of your screen. Scroll over to the center of the page and click on Usage. Select the date range for your report from the previous meeting. Click on the search button and all meetings will appear for your date range. Scroll over to the participants column of the selected meeting that you want and click on export to download the report in Excel format.