Creating meetings, classes or seminars
Instructions for downloading Zoom for your desktop: Using the Zoom desktop client
Setting up a Zoom meeting
If scheduling sessions for a course, we recommend that you use the Zoom plugin for Moodle. See Scheduling Zoom sessions for teaching.
Browser
Choose Meetings and then Schedule a new meeting to set up a new meeting.
Desktop version
Choose Schedule to set up a new meeting.
Meeting options
Set your meeting's details and password (we recommend doing this for security reasons).
You can choose to have the participants' video off by default to stop the Zoom screen becoming too cluttered.
Other options that you might want to set are:
- allow participants to join the session before the host enters the room
- mute participants when they join the meeting.
- add additional hosts by entering their email – this must be a University of Glasgow email address.
See Zoom privacy: Detailed settings guide for classes for detailed guidance on privacy options when hosting live classes.
Save your settings.
Zoom will generate a joining URL for people to access the meeting.
TIP: It’s also good to ask participants to mute their mics when they are not using them to avoid any unnecessary background noise.
Add a Zoom meeting to Moodle (staff)
If you use the Zoom plugin to schedule classes, students will be able to see the Zoom joining links directly in Moodle. See Scheduling Zoom sessions for teaching.
Alternatively, you can add the Zoom-generated URL to the relevant course page by selecting URL from Add an activity or resource in Moodle, then invite your students via your usual communication channels.
Starting a Zoom meeting
Choose Meetings to see a list of all your scheduled meetings. To join/start your meeting choose Start.
You will then be prompted to open the Zoom application.
Zoom toolbar
When you access the main Zoom desktop you will notice a toolbar at the bottom of the screen.
- Mute: allows you to mute your own microphone.
- Stop Video: allows you to stop your video feed.
- Security: allows the host to lock the meeting, allow participants to share their screen, chat and unmute themselves
- Participants: allows you to mute all participants.
- Chat: allows text chat
- Share: allows the host to share their computer desktop and any application that they have open.
- Record/Stop recording: allows you to control the recording of the session.
- Live Transcript: allows you to turn live automated captioning on
- Breakout Rooms: allows the creation and management of breakout rooms.
- The End Meeting option will close the meeting and log all users out.
Text chat
The Chat option allows you to text chat with the entire group or have one-to-one private chats. Select the chat icon from the toolbar and a chat panel will appear to the right-hand of the desktop. Select if you want to address the whole group or an individual.
Live transcript
Zoom now allows live automated captioning while you are in a meeting. To turn live captioning on, select the Live Transcript button (with the CC icon). You can adjust settings such as font size by clicking on the small arrow next to the Live Transcript button.
Breakout rooms
To create breakout rooms, choose Breakout rooms from the toolbar. Choose:
- how many rooms you want
- to manually create the rooms.
Once you have created these rooms you can manually assign users to them.
To start breakout rooms, choose the Breakout rooms icon and this time you will see a button to start the breakout rooms. As a host you can swap between rooms.
Attendance lists
You can access a list of who has attended your meeting or class through Zoom.
- Log in to Zoom
- Choose Reports on the left-hand menu, and then Usage
- Check the date range includes the date of the meeting you want. Meeting reports are available for the last 12 months.
- The number of participants is shown in a column next to each meeting. Select that number to see the list of participants.
- Select 'Export with meeting data' and then choose Export to export this information to an Excel file.