Zoom Basics

Everything you need to know to get started using your free Zoom account

What else do you want to see in this doc? As of right now, it’s drafted except for the final section on Zoom pro and webinars. Let me know if there are additional sections, images, or other changes to the structure or format that would make this doc more useful to you. Get in touch with me via Twitter, LinkedIn, or send me an email.

Here’s my quick & basic handout for students. Feedback welcome!

Jennifer Polk

jen@fromphdtolife.com | @FromPhDtoLife (Twitter) | LinkedIn

Table of Contents

Zoom Basics        1

Introduction        2

What is Zoom and Why Is Everyone Talking about It?        2

Set Up Your Free Zoom Account        3

Starting a New Meeting and Inviting Others        3

How to Join a Meeting        5

Audio & Video Basics for Zoom Meetings        5

Audio        5

Video        6

Managing Your Zoom Meeting        8

Participants        8

A Note about Settings        9

Security        10

Chat        10

Share Screen        11

Breakout Rooms        13

End (or Leave Meeting)        14

Recordings and What to Do with Them        14

Zoom Pro & Webinars        16

The Difference between Meetings and Webinars        17

Useful Links        18

Introduction

I started writing this on Saturday, 14 March, after seeing so many of my Twitter friends needing to figure out online teaching, and knowing that many more folks beyond faculty ranks are suddenly working from home or doing a lot more videoconferencing than before. Zoom was mentioned a LOT, along with news about edtech and other tech companies large and small (and enormous) offering free or extended services to educators and universities.

Now, I’m not an online instructor in the usual sense, but I do know my way around Zoom. Thus this document, which I’m now told is an example of “process documentation.” My hope is that it will guide you step-by-step through setting up and running a Zoom meeting, so you can focus on working well with your colleagues, clients, and students.

I’m updating this document in mid-July, as Zoom’s made a number of important security and other feature changes that affect free accounts.

What is Zoom and Why Is Everyone Talking about It?

Zoom is online meeting and videoconferencing software you can use on your computer or mobile device. It lets you connect with one or more people via your internet or phone connection. It’s similar to Skype, Google Meet, and more business-oriented tools such as GoToMeeting and Microsoft Teams -- there are a lot of these platforms/software tools out there.

I work from home as a regular thing, and almost always have done. Collaboration and other similar software has come a LONG way over the past 10 years. For the last five years, I’ve used Zoom for individual and small group meetings and to host webinars of up to 250 attendees. I’ve also recorded hundreds of videos using Zoom. Meetings for me means lots of sometimes very long work meetings with 1-4 people, and individual and small group coaching sessions.

Barring human error, the only times Zoom hasn’t worked perfectly for me is when there are bandwidth issues -- mine or someone else’s internet can’t handle videoconferencing all that well -- or when there are local technical issues, including someone’s IT-issued computer blocks installation of the software. I’ve found it to be incredibly reliable, truly. The masses aren’t wrong.

In this post I’ll focus on free Zoom accounts. If you need a Pro account because you need to host longer meetings with more active video participants, you can do that for only US $14.99/month.* Upgrading is quick and easy. If you want to host webinars -- like meetings except only host(s) and panelists (optional) are visible/audible by default -- you can add a webinar license for an additional fee.

* Generally speaking, free accounts restrict you to 40 minutes for a meeting with 3 or more participants, including the host. That time-limit is occasionally waived. You can do a 1-on-1 meeting for up to 24 hours no problem, or host larger meetings that are under 40 minutes in total length. (Alternatively, end the meeting, take a break, and then reconvene in a new meeting if you wanted to get around this limit.) Note that “participants” means “users joining via the internet.” That means that three people in the same room all crowded around the same computer count as one participant. Users joining by phone (audio-only) do not count in the participants limit.

Set Up Your Free Zoom Account

Open your favourite computer browser and head over to https://zoom.us/signup to create an account. Stick with the free plan. Once you’ve got an account, navigate to https://zoom.us/download to download and install “Zoom Client for Meetings.” (You can get the mobile app later if you want it; for now, start with this version.)

Now you’ve got the Zoom client (app on your computer) installed and a free Zoom account, you can connect the two. You can also edit settings in both places. Notice your Personal Meeting ID -- see My Profile in the Personal menu list on the left hand side. Your personal ID is static, which means you can share it with others when you arrange meeting times and know that it will work for them. You don’t ever have to use it if you prefer to have a new ID (meeting “room”) every time.

Note that as part of its security upgrades during the pandemic, Zoom requires meetings hosted on a free account to have passwords, and will create one for you automatically. You can also customize the password if you prefer. This prevents unwanted participants who know your meeting ID (but not the password for a meeting) from popping in whenever they want.

Over on the app, you can start a new meeting to test your audio and video options. You can hook up a webcam or turn off your video entirely; you can use computer audio or dial-in with your phone -- numbers are provided, though if you use this option double check that you won’t incur long-distance charges.

Starting a New Meeting and Inviting Others

When you want to set a meeting, you can do it a couple different ways. If you’re communicating with someone and decide you want to move to Zoom either right away or at a set time in future, this is the easiest thing to do: Open your Zoom client on your computer, start a new meeting, and then find the small “information” icon in the top left corner of the meeting window. It’s a lowercase “i” inside a circle. Click on that, and a new box will open. Inside that box click on “Copy URL,” which appears in blue text so it stands out from the other text in the box. Once you’ve done that, the text will change to read “URL copied to Clipboard” in green text, with a check mark beside it. Then, paste what you just copied in an email or text chat to let others know where to join you. Your guest only needs to click on that link.

I know you probably can’t see this image very well. You may be able to zoom in using your browser. (Yes, the Chrome setting is literally called “Zoom.”)

The other way to set up a meeting is by scheduling it within the app or in your online account (see screenshot above). In the Zoom client on your computer, click the “Schedule” icon. In your online account, navigate to “Meetings” and then click the blue button “Schedule a New Meeting.”

When you schedule you can choose to either use your (default) personal ID or a different, randomly-generated one, select different audio and video options, adjust the meeting password, and a few other things. I recommend leaving things as they are until you have a sense of what your preferences are. Settings can be adjusted later, even once the meeting is underway. And if your meeting goes longer or shorter than you scheduled it for, that’s fine: Zoom won’t cut you off just because it’s 1:31pm and you scheduled the meeting to end at 1:30pm.

After you send your invites out, you might get emails from Zoom letting you know that your participants are waiting for you to start the meeting. And you might think, “hold on! That’s not until next Wednesday!” No worries. Folks are just clicking the link in advance to see what’s what. Ignore those emails unless -- as has happened to me at least once -- you realize you’ve forgotten a meeting that you’re supposed to be hosting right now…

If you know folks you’re inviting are going to think, “What the heck is a Zoom?” let them know all they need to do is click the URL in the email they got from you. If they’re feeling a bit savvy, they can get the Zoom desktop client or download the mobile app -- all are free. They can search for “Zoom” in the App Store or Google Play. For work meetings and classes, accessing Zoom on a computer is probably the better option, but it’ll work fine on a phone or tablet; headphones or earbuds are definitely recommended, though.

How to Join a Meeting

If you set up the meeting, you can start it from your online account or in the client/app by clicking the “Start” button.

If you’ve been invited to a meeting, you might have gotten an email with a bunch of different URLs and numbers in it -- this might look confusing! The thing to zoom in on (#dadjoke) is the URL or Meeting ID. I almost always use the URL, which will begin with https://zoom.us/j/ followed by a string of numbers, six or more. When the time comes to join the meeting, click on that link or enter it into your browser. If you have the app installed on that computer, it should open automatically -- or your browser will prompt you to join via your Zoom app -- and you’ll be in the correct meeting “room.” You can also enter that same URL or the Meeting ID and password directly into the Zoom client. Click “Join,” enter the appropriate info, select the settings you want, and then click “Join” again.

The host can set participant videos to launch automatically, and so it’s always a good idea to make sure you’re decent! If you’re worried, cover your camera with a sticky note or something so that no one will see you even if your webcam gets turned on. You can also adjust your own settings. Click on the gear icon in the top right corner of your computer’s Zoom client, then click Video on the left. Here, you can toggle on or off a few different settings. I like to use the video preview before each meeting, so I’ve got that enabled.

Once you’re in the meeting you can adjust video and audio, and in my experience this process almost always works well. Note that contrary to advice shared by some grumps online (#joking), you probably can get away with wearing sweatpants.

Audio & Video Basics for Zoom Meetings

Audio

Usually, you can listen or participate in a Zoom meeting by using your phone as your audio source. That might not be an option for much longer given increased demand -- at least not with a free plan. That leaves computer audio, which in general is what I recommend you use anyways.

Best practices for online presentations include getting yourself a separate USB microphone -- the kind you might have seen podcasters use. I have never used one of those, and as a consequence my audio isn’t amazing but it’s fine. I do suggest having a set of earphones or headphones, even cheap ones. So much the better if they include a mic, as many do. This will improve the quality of your audio and prevent possible feedback or echoing issues. But if you or a participant don’t have earphones, you can still use Zoom. You might have to speak up a bit so your built-in computer mic picks you up.

What if one of your participants has terrible audio? If the problem can’t be solved (by moving to a new location or closing their office door, for example) you can have them participate using the chat or speaking as needed and then spending the rest of the time on mute. As a host you have the ability to mute any participant at any time, and can prevent individuals from unmuting themselves. Find this option in the Participants window (more about this and other features below).

A good tip thanks to Alexandra Rodney: Best practice is for every participant to be using their own device. It can be challenging to get good audio if two or more people are all speaking into the same computer mic. If at all possible, be in separate rooms; if that’s not possible, use headphones. But I have hosted a webinar with two presenters sitting side-by-side and it did work, so it can be done.

Video

When I was doing 1-on-1 coaching as a main business activity, I used the phone or -- for folks based in other countries -- Zoom with audio only (no video). You can certainly keep the cameras off during a Zoom meeting, and still use all the other features the software offers, including Chat and Share. But if you’re using Zoom as a replacement for face-to-face meetings, you probably want to have your webcam turned on, and to encourage other participants to have theirs enabled as well. Don’t have an external webcam? That’s fine. Your laptop very likely has a built-in one that will be suitable.

While audio quality is of primary importance -- you want your audience to be able to hear you as well as possible, particularly if any of them will be relying on live transcription software -- there are relatively easy things you can do to make for a better video experience. Ideally, set up your computer so that you have a lightsource in front of you. In the screenshot below (taken from a Zoom video recording), my lightsource is my big window/balcony door, which is to my left and a few feet away. Overhead lighting isn’t ideal, but if it’s dark when you’re meeting and that’s all you’ve got, so be it. Try to avoid being lit from behind, as your face will be in shadow.

Me attempting to keep Izzy away from my earphone cord while I record a video interview using Zoom back in August 2019. Your cats might become very popular with your participants, too.

Speaking of the screenshot above, your camera will capture what else is around you and who else might pop into your space… in my case, Izzy, the cat. I’ve made a general effort over the years to ensure my background isn’t the worst without worrying too much about it. If you’ve got a blank wall behind you, a green screen, or a newer computer with strong specs, you may be able to take advantage of Zoom’s virtual backgrounds, as these professors have done -- do click through for laughs:

https://twitter.com/baym/status/1238219581073657857

https://twitter.com/wgrover/status/1237532908107120640

https://twitter.com/djsziff/status/1236091313386221568

https://twitter.com/EchinoKate/status/1239914023107395584

Pro tip: Since the pandemic, brands and graphic design apps have created their own Zoom backgrounds that you can use. Some of them are animated. Check out Canva’s free Zoom backgrounds, for example. I find backgrounds can be more distracting than whatever IRL (in real life) visual distractions are behind you. That being said, you may want to use a background for privacy or other reasons, even if it’s not ideal. There is no ideal during a global pandemic.

Other good video practices include being a couple feet away from your camera, positioning it so that you can look directly into it (which might mean propping your laptop on top of some dictionaries, or a milk crate as I’ve done), and making sure your face is visible -- your whole face, and not just your chin or forehead. Zoom allows you to see yourself, so it’s simple enough to check what you look like.

Pros will tell you to endeavour to look directly at the camera as opposed to at the video feed of the person you’re addressing, or at your PowerPoint slide, etc. Sure, endeavour, but realistically you won’t be able to keep this up. The next best thing is keeping the thing you’re looking at close to your camera, and not on a separate screen. No one wants to look at your right cheek the whole time you’re presenting. Still, there are more important considerations than this right now, so let’s all agree to be gentle with each other.

Bonus pro tip: Did you know you can hide yourself from yourself and still have others see you? Seeing your own video feed in a meeting is distracting. To hide yourself, make sure you’re in Gallery View, which is when all the participant videos appear side-by-side, all the same size. (See the top right corner to switch this if needed; if you see “Speaker View,” it means you’re in Gallery View already.) Next, place your cursor over your own video feed and click on the blue box with the three dots in the top right corner. From that drop-down menu, select “Hide Self View.” If you’re in someone else’s meeting and they’re sharing their screen, that setting may be elsewhere on your screen, probably at the very top of the Zoom window.

Here’s what my desk looks like (when it’s tidy) to me. My external webcam, a Logitech HD 1080p, sits atop my external monitor. The bookshelves are behind me. During Zoom meetings my cat, Izzy, tends to be on the desk, and I wind up either removing the keyboard entirely or placing it on my legs, underneath my desk. It is what it is!

Managing Your Zoom Meeting

Now that you’ve tested Zoom out, you know you can turn on or off your audio and video, and you’ve used the invite feature. In the Zoom window you noticed a few other icons along the bottom: Security, Participants, Chat, Share Screen, and Record. You might also see Breakout Rooms and Reactions. On the bottom left you may see your own name; top left, there’s that additional information icon we check out before as well as a note about encryption; top right, you can control what you see (switch between Gallery and Speaker View); and then End is on the bottom right. If you’re in someone else’s meeting room, you will see a slightly different layout.

If you're using a mobile app, things are of course going to look different. I'm focusing on the desktop version in this guide. You can do a lot with the mobile apps, though.

Participants

Look at the bottom of the Zoom window. Click on Participants. A new box will open, perhaps attached to the main Zoom window; it’ll show a list of who’s in the meeting. This is where you can change your own name, mute other participants, and make another participant the meeting’s host, among other things. The ability for the host to mute others is a great feature: sometimes participants don’t realize just how loud the coffee shop they’re in is or that we can all hear that siren going by -- or dogs barking in the next room. As a host you can also mute everyone at once, unmute them, and do a few other things -- click on “More” in the bottom right of the Participants window.

To change your own name, place your cursor over yourself in the participant list. Click the blue “More >” button, and then “Rename.” My default name is “Jennifer Polk,” and depending on the context I might add “(she/her),” “, PhD,” my Twitter handle, or shorten my first name to “Jen,” whatever. I can imagine professors having their teaching assistants add “CLASS T.A.” to their names, for example.

For individual participants, the Participant window is where they can go to raise their hands, which can be a useful tool for managing discussion or Q&A in a larger meeting. As host, you can then see who raised a hand. You can also lower any individual hand or lower them all at once. There are other interaction icons available to participants, too.

If you enabled “Reactions” in your settings -- these are separate from the interaction tools found under Participants -- your participants can click on thumbs up or a clap icon. When they click on those the selected reaction icon will appear in their video feed for a few seconds, for others in the meeting to see.

Depending on your settings, you might have to manually admit people into your meeting, you may hear a “ding” every time someone joins, or other things that you might find annoying or wonder if there’s a way of changing. Zoom’s “Waiting Room” feature is now enabled by default in your account, which means you as the host will have to manually “admit” your participants when they click to join your meeting. You may want to begin your meeting a few minutes early and encourage others to do the same if it’s important to you to get formally underway at a set time. If you upgrade to a Pro account, so you assign a co-host to help you with this and other technical aspects of hosting a Zoom meeting. You can turn the Waiting Room feature off in your account, if you’re not concerned about interruptions.

A Note about Settings

The answer to a lot of things like this is, “yes, change your settings.” To edit your global settings, log in to your Zoom account online and go to Settings, https://zoom.us/profile/setting. On this screen is a LONG list of options. I recommend leaving things as is unless you identify something that’s really not working for you. I say this because I think it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the possibilities! Keep it simple.

That being said, there may be settings you want to enable or disable right away. So much depends on your participants and whether you’re hosting a closed meeting or something more open. You can limit the type of files that are shared via the Chat feature. You can disallow participants (except you, the host) from sharing their screens or other applications. You can block participants you remove from rejoining your meeting.

Security

Speaking of these kinds of settings, you can also enable and disable security settings within a meeting. Click on the Security icon at the bottom of the Zoom window. Here you can lock a meeting, enable the Waiting Room, and let your participants share their screens, change their own names, and use the Chat. By locking a meeting, you block anyone else from joining. This is a new icon that’s been added since the pandemic began, in response to “Zoombombing.” If you don’t see it in your Zoom client, you might need to upgrade your software to the newest version. Don’t worry: it’s free.

We’ve already covered Participants, so let’s talk Chat next.

Chat

This feature is available to all meeting participants (unless you turn it off in your settings or via the Security icon), except those who are listening in from their phone and aren’t connected via a Zoom app or browser. As with the Participants window, you can unanchor Chat from the main Zoom window and move it elsewhere on your screen(s).

Participants can send messages to the main chat area -- everyone will see it -- or privately to the host. As a host you can message individuals privately as well; they can message each other privately, too, unless you turn off their ability to do that in your Zoom settings. The Chat is also where participants can send files -- this is a newer, much welcome (and occasionally abused) feature inside Zoom.

How busy the Chat is will depend on a bunch of different things. Some large meetings might have almost no Chat activity; some quite small ones might have messages flying back and forth all the time. As a host, especially if you’re sharing your screen, it is tricky to manage everything -- or even just see everything that’s happening. It might be helpful to remember that your other participants are also likely feeling a bit unsteady. Zoom and this kind of working/studying is new to a LOT of people. Here’s wishing patience on us all.

You and others can also save the Chat (it’ll be a .txt file) during the meeting. You can set Chat to save automatically in your settings, or you and others can do it manually. You can also not let other participants save these messages -- see your settings. If you do want to save the chat and haven’t set that up as something that always happens, remember to do it before the end of the meeting -- once it’s gone, it’s gone. Why would you or others want to save the Chat transcript? There may be awesome questions or comments in there.

Note that you as the host will see any private messages sent between participants in the saved transcript. You are welcome to see this as creepy, fantastic for following up on harassment, or both. Your participants may not realize that you have access to their backchannel comments. Also note that the Chat itself won’t be part of any recording you make within Zoom. See below for more on recordings.

A few of the Chat settings in your account -- you can turn a lot of things on or off, and they’ll apply to all your meetings going forward. Even though I’ve used Zoom for years, I’m surprised to see all the possibilities! There’s a lot you can customize, should you want to.

Share Screen

What if you need to share a slideshow or otherwise use visuals for a presentation or discussion? Zoom makes it easy to do this with their Share Screen feature. You can share any application that’s already open on your computer or other device. Try to avoid sharing your entire desktop/screen, both for privacy reasons and to allow for a better visual experience: Your participants may be viewing on a small screen and so it’s best to only share what you mean to be sharing.

Let me repeat this point: do not share your whole desktop/screen. It can make things easier for you but it's not worth it. No one needs to see you've got a folder named "DIVORCE" on your desktop…!

Have your PowerPoint file or appropriate browser tab(s) open -- or whatever else on your computer you want to show other participants. Then, click the Share Screen button at the bottom of the Zoom window. A separate window will open, with a bunch of options.

Let’s say you want to share a PowerPoint presentation. Select that program, click Share again, and in a moment or two your participants should be seeing what you see. At this point you probably want to launch the presentation itself (by pressing “play”), to ensure they only see the slides themselves and not the rest of the application. Do ask your audience what they see to make sure. You may have to adjust the slide show settings in PowerPoint itself to make sure it works properly.

Clicking the green Share Screen icon will open this box, which shows you what your share options are. In this case I’ve got a presentation (PowerPoint) already “playing” on my second screen, and can select that specifically. Even better? I should choose "PowerPoint Slide Show," the one underneath and to the left. Note you can choose to share other applications or launch the whiteboard feature from this window.

Alternatively, if you’ve got a second screen, you may be able to launch the presentation itself first, then click the Share Screen button in Zoom, choose that presentation, and then share only it (see screenshot above). That skips you needing to launch the presentation after you’ve started sharing. (I hope I’m making sense here.) It’s good to test things out with a colleague beforehand, as different versions of the software can work a bit differently.

Now that you’re sharing your presentation, you can move through the slides as you usually would. You will still have access to Zoom controls, perhaps at the top of your screen. You can open the Chat or Participants windows; you can switch in between different applications. Know that your viewers will only see what you shared. That also means that if you want to stop showing your slides and start showing a website or Word document, you need to “stop” your current share and then begin a new one. Again, I recommend doing a quick test of all this beforehand with a friend so that you’re more comfortable doing it in front of a live audience, as it were. Or rely on your participants to be patient with you. It can be confusing, even for the experienced among us!

Some of you might have fancy slide decks with embedded videos, audio clips, and animations of various kinds. Your internet connection or computer might not be awesome at handling a whole bunch of resource-intensive tasks at once, and your participants also might have bandwidth issues. I’ve seen these things all work perfectly, but you may want to err on the side of less fancy. You can always link participants to other websites and send files via the Chat feature so they can check them out on their own. Those of you using Zoom alongside a LMS will have even more options besides for providing instruction, enabling asynchronous or synchronous discussion, and facilitating collaboration. The rest of us can do these things with other online tools of various kinds. You might not want to do everything within your Zoom meeting itself, and that’s fine.

Pro tip: Your presentation software may have built-in live captions. Google Slides has this feature, and it’s really pretty good, and not just at captioning “un-accented” English, whatever that means. Give it a try. Captions are necessary for some participants, and will be appreciated by others. There are other third-party apps you can use, too.

Breakout Rooms

The next feature to discuss is Zoom’s ability, even within a free account, to provide additional sub-meeting spaces, called Breakout rooms. You might not see this option when you launch your first Zoom meeting. If not, you can enable them in your profile settings in your online account.* Once enabled, you’ll see a new icon/button near the bottom right of the Zoom window the next time you start a meeting.

* Note that if you find certain settings are "locked by admin," that means you can't change them and you should take it up with your IT folks. Because I have a personal Zoom account (not an institutional one), I can enable and disable at will.

Breakout rooms are an awesome tool for enabling small group discussions, or handling 1-on-1 conversations during a larger group meeting. As the host, you can create them during a meeting, choosing how large you want them to be, how long you want them to last, and other things. You can assign individual participants to groups automatically or manually, and move folks to other groups once the rooms have been created. You the host can then move in between groups as you want -- you just show up and can leave and join another. When you want to end the breakout rooms, you can do that, and participants will get a warning that their time is up (60 seconds is the default, but it can be more or less time than that -- you decide).

Each breakout room has its own live Chat and participants can share their screens, as in the main room. This is a great feature for group work and I bet you’re imagining other possibilities! I’ve heard of meetings that use breakout rooms along with Google Docs to allow small group collaboration, for example. Participants in breakout rooms can “ask for help” and request that the host join them. (Thanks to the folks who helped me test this out on 15 Mar.)

If your meeting has co-hosts (requires a paid account) and you want them to also have the ability to move between rooms, be sure to assign them to a room in the first place. See more about co-hosts here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fjlDWHERHoHG-cs5daN57MzL7leyFSGDYqnYmjW65-U/edit?usp=drivesdk.

End (or Leave Meeting)

Finished your meeting? Awesome! Well done. Click End on the bottom right. Or, if you need to step out but want the meeting to continue, you can assign another host -- do that in the Participants window -- and then Leave Meeting. Note the difference between “Leave” (you’re a participant) and “End” (you’re the host). Once the meeting is ended, everyone will just disappear. If you’re recording, it will stop; the chat will also disappear.

You can set up after-meeting options in your settings. When I’m hosting and I know or suspect my participants are new(ish) to Zoom, I try to remember to give them a heads-up that the ending can feel a bit abrupt… because it is. Lots of folks have taken to physically waving as a signal to others that they’re departing. I think this is a nice cultural norm we’re developing.

What if you inadvertently leave or end a meeting and now want back in? If you leave by mistake or because your internet connection goes down / computer shuts down / whatever, you can rejoin the meeting by clicking the same link or entering the same meeting ID as you did when you first entered. The host may have to re-admit you. If you end the meeting or it ends on you, you can restart it the same way you originally started it. Let any participants know they can rejoin you at the same link as before. No stress. It happens.

Recordings and What to Do with Them

I’ve used Zoom as my primary recording software for years, simply because when I’m recording it’s almost always to make a video that includes one or more other people in different locations. Once you start a meeting you can begin recording at any time; you can stop recording at any time. You can allow or prevent other participants from using the Record feature in your account settings. You can definitely record a meeting with only one participant (you).

To record, click the Record icon at the bottom of the meeting window, select if you’d like to record locally or to the cloud (if given the option), and check the top left of your Zoom room to see if you are now recording. If you will be recording a live meeting, I recommend doing a quick test with a friend to see how the video will look. What I mean is that how you have things set up for a good live experience may or may not translate as well to video, if you’ve got strong opinions about such things. See the image below for an example of what a video recording might look like, assuming a slide is being shared and webcams are on.

After you end the meeting, your recording(s) will convert -- this should happen automatically -- and get saved on your computer. Zoom might prompt you to select a file location. Then navigate to your Zoom folder (or wherever the files are stored). On my Windows laptop, the recordings are put in separate subfolders according to the meeting they originated in. These subfolders may also contain separate audio-only files and saved text chat transcripts, if applicable.

Screenshot from a Zoom video recording I did with Amruta Inamdar from Purdue University -- this one’s taken from a webinar, but it looks the same as recordings of meetings. In this case the speaker was sharing a slide and that’s what’s primarily visible in the resultant recording. You can see the host and presenter webcam feeds in the top right. The chat and other Zoom in-meeting features aren’t part of the recording. Don’t want the webcam feed(s) to cover any part of the slides? You can probably accomplish that by doing it old-school with standard 4:3 aspect instead of widescreen 16:9 for your slides.

Once converted, video files will play on any player -- you’ve probably got more than one already installed on your computer. You can also upload recordings to your favourite storage platform, for easier sharing. I’ve used Vimeo for years, and have a personal (free) account that has room for a bunch of videos: I’ve got a dozen hour-long ones in there. YouTube is another free option; there are others. I like Vimeo because (unless I’m out of date on this) it has greater privacy options, and because it’s aimed at filmmakers and other creative professionals and businesses, you can easily upgrade if you need more storage or other features.

What about closed captions and transcriptions? I’ve ordered captions for hundreds of videos over the past few years. There are lots of options, all of which will cost you in either time or money. Transcription technology is truly amazing these days, to the point where you might not need to do much or even any editing! Video hosting services may have built-in captioning, or you can use third-party services. For transcription, I’ve used Otter.ai with great success.

If you have a budget and need or want professional captions or transcripts for compliance or accessibility reasons, the service I’ve used is Rev. English-language captions cost US $1.25/minute of video and you can set things up so they are automatically added to your Vimeo or YouTube video once completed. Then you can double check them for accuracy, make any changes in your Rev account, and they magically appear in your videos. Note that the captions will likely cover the bottom quarter of your video, so design your slides accordingly. Minimal text on your slides is better anyways, right?

Zoom Pro & Webinars

A screenshot of a Zoom webinar (pre-broadcast). In this case I was going to do a live interview with Mark Chan from the APA. I didn’t enable Q&A for this, but you can see the Polls option in the list of icons. The More (3 dots) is where the streaming options live. At the top is the Broadcast button -- I’d click that to begin the live webinar; when I took this shot I hadn’t done that yet. After a broadcast starts the Participants number changes in real time, letting you see at a glance how many are in the “room” with you.

The Difference between Meetings and Webinars

It’s useful to understand the difference between a "meeting" and a "webinar." I’ve put these words in quotation marks, because they are the terms Zoom uses for different-but-related products, and that difference is meaningful.

Most folks, and anyone with a free account, uses meetings, not webinars. To use more Zoom words, meetings have "participants"; webinars have "attendees." Both have "hosts" and possibly "co-hosts." Webinars can have "panelists." These words signal important differences between meetings and webinars, namely, that the former are meant to be broadly inclusive and enable active participation by others in the virtual room. Hosts still have control over a few things, but this format signals participation is generally desirable.

Webinars are great when you plan to broadcast -- either to a live audience in the room or via Facebook Live or YouTube. Webinars do have engagement features, and well-designed and -facilitated sessions will make appropriate use of them so attendees have a great experience.

But there's no pretense of equality in a webinar: attendees are muted and don't have their cameras on by default. Only rarely might a host manually unmute an attendee. I've never done this. If I wanted other people to be visible on camera and speak up, I'd make them a panelist.

When hosting an event using Zoom (great choice 👌) decide if you're hosting a meeting or springing an extra few $$ to do a webinar instead.

Also note that there are a few features that are exclusive to either meeting or webinar. If there’s a particular feature that’s important to you and you’re deciding between the two options, take a look at this comparison chart from Zoom.

  • What’s in the Pro plan (US $14.99/month)
  • No 40-minute time limit on group meetings -- worth paying just for this
  • Additional reporting features
  • Cloud recording storage (not much, but some)
  • Can purchase add-ons including webinars
  • Webinars (US $40/month and up)
  • Allows you to broadcast to a larger audience
  • Hosts(s), panelist(s), and attendees
  • Streaming/live broadcast via FB, YouTube
  • Interaction tools: polls (set these up ahead of time, then start them live during your meeting and participants can vote), Q&A (good for separating questions from chat)
  • Additional reporting features

Useful Links

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“Zoom Basics” by Jennifer Polk is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Jennifer Polk

14 March - 13 November 2020

jen@fromphdtolife.com