All UIC students and faculty have access to premium Zoom accounts with their UIC email addresses, so this platform may be used as an alternative to Blackboard Collaborate for synchronous sessions.
To add Zoom to your course on Blackboard, select the + symbol at the top of the left-hand menu panel and choose Tool Link. [View Screenshot] Type in Zoom and then select Zoom Meeting from the drop-down menu. Click on the newly-created Zoom menu item and follow the prompts. (You may move this menu item by dragging and dropping it, using the cursor on the outer left side.)
From inside the Zoom menu item, new meetings can be created by selecting Schedule a New Meeting at the top right-hand corner. Any meeting that is created from within this page will be visible to anyone enrolled in the course. (Make sure to schedule your personal meetings from your own Zoom page and not here!)
You can give your meeting a topic and description to help students get oriented (e.g., “Lucy’s Drop-in Hours” or “Synchronous Discussion Session – Mondays”). You can choose dates and times, and you can make these sessions recurring. See an overview of some helpful options below. Once you have filled out these options, click Save.
Select the Meeting option to Record the meeting automatically and select In the cloud. Cloud recordings of meetings should appear in the tab titled Cloud Recordings on the main Zoom page.
In the area marked Security, you may choose whether or not you wish to have a waiting room. Unless there is someone monitoring for joining participants regularly, it may be best to turn off this option. You can restrict attendees in the following way:
Require Authentication to JoinUofI Zoom UsersNote: If this option is selected, let your students know they must use their UIC Zoom account to join your sessions.
You may add the UIC email address of another faculty member or TA at the bottom of the options screen. This individual would be a secondary host of the meeting and can allow participants to join, remove participants, etc.
To begin your meeting, enter the Zoom page and select Start. [View Screenshot] Follow the prompt to open the Zoom app. If you choose to record your session, you will receive an email when it has been uploaded to the cloud after your session has ended.
You may wish to use the Poll feature to engage students during your session. To add poll questions to your session beforehand, click on the link for the session once it has been created. [View Screenshot] Scroll to the bottom of the screen and select Download a CSV Template. [View Screenshot]
You may use this template to create poll questions for your students. Once you have completed your poll template, select Import CSV. Your questions are now attached.
During your session, click the Polling button to launch your poll. [View Screenshot]
Synchronous sessions can be difficult without seeing students’ faces: are they following along? You can use the Reactions feature to ask students for non-verbal feedback (e.g., “Give me a thumbs up if you’ve got it!”, “Are you ready to move on? Give me a yes/no reaction!”) [View Screenshot]
Students will often make use of the chat to ask questions. Navigate here by pressing the Chat button at the bottom of the screen. You can keep this open as a pop-up throughout your session, or have a TA monitor it for questions.
If you have an iPad and use a Mac system, you can share your iPad screen in the meeting. This is a nice feature for annotating materials as you work with students.
To link your iPad (or iPhone) to Zoom, follow the procedure here
My general procedure is to export a PPT file as a PDF and then use an app like PDF Expert for annotations. This app has several nice features allowing you to control how the students view your PDF, and providing many annotation options (e.g., highlighter, marker, text, and so on). The free version of the app has all of these options. Annotating a tablet is easiest with a stylus, which you can get online for relatively low-cost.
Any meeting you schedule from within your Course Bb page will be visible to anyone enrolled in the course. However, if you wish to schedule a meeting with limited permissions (e.g., a TA meeting) you can require registration so that only the appropriate people may join.
When you set up your meeting, select the option to Require Registration. Once you save your meeting, you can customize options about the registration (e.g., if the meeting is recurring you can set it up so participants only register once). Participants will be able to register via by selecting the meeting in on the Zoom Bb page and registering. [View Screenshot]