Zoom Tips & Tricks

We know that you’ll likely be using Zoom quite often and wanted to share some tips & tricks with you!

Be sure to also check out:

• Zoom Video Tutorials
• Zoom Guidelines for UBC RAs
• Virtual Programming

General things to Note About Zoom

• Host vs Co-host roles:
  • Host
    • Only 1 host at a time; can pass on Host access to someone but that would render their own access to a Co-host.
    • Have access to all function to manage the Zoom Meeting Room
    • Only host have the eraser
  • Co-host
    • Can have multiple Co-host role at the same time, great for having moderator support and reducing workload for speaker/facilitator.
    • Can start closed captioning and assign someone or a third-party to provide closed captioning.
    • Can start and end live streaming or screen sharing.
    • Can end meeting for all participants, but cannot start a meeting.
    • Can make another participant a co-host.
    • Can start and organize breakout rooms, including move participants from one breakout room to another.
    • Start the waiting room, and admit or remove participants from waiting room
    • Can launch and close pre-created polls, but cannot create polls mid-session.

• Chat
  • Participants joining late into the session CANNOT see any content posted in the chat prior to their entry; you may need to repost information or link into the chat if you have someone joining in late, or was disconnected and had to re-enter into the meeting room.
  • Breakout room chat will only be available for view to participants of the breakout room.
  • Host and Co-host have ability to save the chat as a text file; will need to enable that function in order for participants to have the ability to save the chat.

• Breakout Room
  • Recording function will only include the breakout room the person doing the recording is part of, but not other breakout rooms.
  • Anyone can activate screen share in a breakout room, only the main room is limited to Host and Co-host only if the restriction is set.

Creating a welcoming environment:

These are some recommended good practices you could use as a Zoom meeting room facilitator or moderator to reduce technological and social anxiety participants may feel from engaging in a virtual setting.

• Login to start the Zoom meeting room 15min early; this allows participants time and space to test their technology and have room to troubleshoot issues with your help.
• Upon starting the session, screen share a Zoom instruction slide to displays the basic function and control of a Zoom participant’s screen; this allows us to provide support and prevent making assumptions on any participant’s level of comfort and familiarity with Zoom functions.
  • You can find different templates of such instructions on the PRC Website, or via google search.
• You could choose to play some music when waiting for participants to join the Meeting Room, the music could lessen the awkwardness the silence or sounds of keyboard tapping could cause.
• Where possible, welcome participants joining early by saying “hi” and addressing them by displayed name.
• Do a “soft start” to your session; avoid jumping into the actual content of your Zoom session until 5 – 7minutes have passed.
  • This is especially a good practice if you are unable to open the Zoom Meeting Room early, to give folks to settle in and check their tech without worry of missing the content.
  • You could facilitate a chill, simple check in activity or ask a silly question to get folks warmed up for participation during this time.
• At the start of session, give participants an overview on how this Zoom session will work so they can know what to expect:
  • What’s the structure of this session? Is there scheduled break time? Will breakout room be used?
  • How frequently will participants be asked to engage?
    • Verbally or via the chat space?
    • Breakout room?
    • Will the whiteboard function be used?
  • What is the expected participant etiquette of being in the space?
    • Videos and audio be turned on or off throughout the session?
    • How should participants indicate they would like to speak? Free for all at any time or do they need to wait to be called by the facilitator?
    • Should questions be asked at dedicated time, or can it be asked at any time?

Accessibility Considerations

We should always be as considerate as we can to remove possible barriers when engaging residents.  This is no different when planning for in-person engagement or virtual engagement. What differs though is the specifics we may need to consider, and how we should go about removing possible barriers.

• Managing technological bandwidth
  • Be considerate of individual’s bandwidth when engaging residents on Zoom; the more participants with their video turned on and displayed on screen, the higher the bandwidth is being consumed, and could cause lagging or disconnect for individuals if their hardware or software could not support the required bandwidth.
  • Avoid screen sharing videos with high framerate or quick animations; consider sharing the link to the video in the chat and provide time for participants to view it on their own during the Zoom session instead.
• If your session is informative/lecture style based and does not include any content or discussion of sensitive content, you as the host could choose to record session so you can redistribute the content again after the session.
  • Downloading the recording could help with addressing issues with participants who had connection issue.
  • Redistribute the session for students who missed the session.
  • ***Consult the Zoom guideline prior to using the recording function.
• Explore using closed captioning options for the Zoom session where possible or necessary:
  • Zoom’s built-in closed captioning function requires for the text to be typed out; it is not automatic.
  • You could explore using Google’s automatic closed captioning function and screen sharing the generated closed caption.
• If you are asking participant to share questions or responses via the chat function, read the question out loud or summarize the responses before proceeding with your own comments.
  • Depending on technology capacity, participants (especially folks joining via the cellphone Zoom app) may not be able to monitor the chat as easily as others.

Ideas for Interactive Engagement in Zoom

Land Acknowledgement:

• You may choose to do a Land Acknowledgement at the start of the Zoom session as you would at the start of a community meeting or event where possible and appropriate. You could consider using resources like https://native-land.ca/ to display the First Nation/Indigenous territory you as the Host is present and joining the Zoom session from.
• You may choose to encourage participants to add to the chat to say the territory they are presently located or are from to give space for people to share their piece without taking a lot of time and space from the session if you let participants take turns to do it verbally.

Use easy non-verbal engagement to quickly gauge participants’ reaction to content:

• Not anonymous:
  • Prompt Chat Emoticons
  • Prompt Zoom Reactions
• Can be anonymous:
  • Use polls
  • Use Whiteboard & Annotation function
    • Have participants type their responses up on screen.
    • Use stamp functions as anonymous thoughts and information gathering.
      • Spectrum activity – have participants place a üon an image of a spectrum to indicate their viewpoint in response to a prompt. E.g. “How excited are you about your midterms?”, spectrum ends showing “absolutely not” and “I’m stoked!”
      • “Relatability?” or “Voting” activity – have participants place a üon one of the 4 images displayed on screen share. E.g. “which meme do you most relate to?”

Using Breakout Rooms for Small Group Engagement:

• Great to encourage familiarity and active engagement between participants.
• If you have multiple Co-host, assign one Co-host to each breakout room to moderate and help facilitate conversations.
• As Host, you may want to drop by each breakout room to answer questions or gauge conversations. To not risk surprising participants in breakout rooms when your drop by, provide rule of engagement ahead of time, or send broadcast messages to keep participants informed of your flow.
  • g. “I will be visiting the rooms from room 1 to 5, and aim to stay for 3 minutes per room. I will make a broadcast announcement upon moving into a new room.”

These are only a few of the options you have available to engage residents through Zoom.  To see other ideas or tools to engage residents and build community virtually, check out this page!