Top 5 Tips for Using Zoom Meetings

March 19, 2020 Cassidy Jo Colson

Screenshot of Yiling and Jill from the Zoom desktop client. — DELTA Instructional Technologists Yiling Chappelow (left) and Jill Anderson (right) participate in a Zoom meeting for a training video. Visit youtube.com/learntech to watch the tutorial.

Zoom is a web-conferencing tool with many features and functions to facilitate large group and one-on-one virtual meetings, text chats, webinars, screen sharing, recordings of meetings and more.

While many instructors will be using Zoom in their courses for synchronous instruction and office hours — others at NC State can take advantage of all Zoom has to offer as well. Zoom can help facilitate communication, collaboration and help build a sense of community in the online environment.

To get started, visit ncsu.zoom.us to sign in with your Unity ID and password. Download the Zoom client application (this step is important to get the best experience using Zoom.) Sign in to the Zoom app using “Sign In with SSO” and use “ncsu” as the company domain to then log in with your NC State credentials. Once you’re in Zoom, you have the ability to start, join or schedule a Zoom session. Visit this Knowledge Base article for further instructions. You can also download the Zoom mobile client and start or join meetings from your phone.

Here are a few tips and tricks to help you navigate Zoom meetings like a pro:

Secure Your Meetings

In light of recent concerns surrounding “Zoombombing,” when unauthorized people disrupt a meeting, we have some recommendations to keep your meetings secure and private. We strongly recommend that you restrict access to ONLY members of the NC State community. You can do so by checking “only authenticated users can join” under the meeting options when you are scheduling a meeting, and making sure that “NC State users only” is selected. Be aware that scheduling meetings through the Zoom website at https://ncsu.zoom.us provides the most complete set of options. Read the Knowledge Base article about protecting your meetings and check out further acknowledgments from Zoom regarding privacy and security.

Mute Yourself When You’re Not Talking

When you’re in a group meeting via Zoom, nothing can derail the conversation quite like random background noise. You can enable a setting via the Zoom client app where you are automatically muted when joining a session.

A trick for unmuting yourself quickly when you need to speak, simply press and hold the space bar to temporarily unmute yourself. This is helpful for large group meetings where you may not be talking often but can quickly mute and unmute if needed.

Use the In-Meeting Chat Feature

As a participant in a meeting, use the chat feature to ask questions or provide further insight into the discussion. You can send chats to everyone or to individual participants. When you are the host, you can keep an eye on the chat for discussion topics. In addition, as a participant, in the view participants tab on the bottom menu bar, you can select the “raise hand” icon to notify the host that you would like to speak. As the host, you can view the manage participants tab to see participant’s selections and also manage mute settings here — for specific individuals or for the entire group.

Record the Session

Zoom’s recording capabilities allow you to record to the cloud or locally to your device. The recordings capture the chat messages and also will automatically create an audio transcript of the video (when recording to the cloud). Having a recorded meeting session can be extremely helpful for your employees who are working flexible hours due to other demands during this time. Recordings of sessions such as a presentation or webinar can serve as a resource for employees to rewatch if necessary.

Explore Zoom’s Settings

Take some time to explore all of Zoom’s settings and customize your experience. You have the ability to set your display view from “active speaker” where your screen is filled with the current speaker or “gallery view” where you can see everyone in the meeting at the same time. You can also add a virtual background just in case your remote working location is a bit messy. Other settings include adding participants’s names along with video, how you want to enter/exit Zoom meetings and more.