Technology for Remote Teaching: Top Recommendations

Zoom is web conferencing software that allows instructors/meeting organizers to create virtual meetings where you can share and record your computer screen with viewers.Villanova provides faculty with Zoom Pro accounts. Previously you had to request one but in response to the Covid-19 closure, accounts have now been created automatically for all faculty. Use the Villanova Zoom Login page link to get started. Villanova staff who need a Zoom account must still request one.

Zoom integrates with Blackboard allowing students access to the faculty member's upcoming live sessions/meetings as well as recordings of prior class sessions. There are options for tracking attendance at live sessions as well as tracking downloads and views of recorded sessions. The links below walk you through setting up a meeting and provide additional user guides and other materials to help you understand the software or troubleshoot issues that may arise during use. There is also a mobile app available for iPhone and Android as a well as a plug-in for presenting from an iPhone/iPad.

A faculty training on Zoom was held on March 13th and a recording of that training is provided below. Zoom trainings are also available from UNIT as webinars that may be attended from on or off-campus. Please see UNIT"s Workshop Calendar for upcoming sessions.

For more information about Blackboard generally, see the Blackboard Basics tab.

UPDATE MARCH 31ST: Waiting Room Feature Now Applied to All Zoom Meetings

• As of 5 PM on 3/31, Villanova IT has enabled the Waiting Room for all Villanova Zoom meetings.  With this setting enabled, non-Villanova participants cannot join the meeting until a host/instructor admits them individually from the waiting room.  If Villanova participants (students/faculty/staff) find themselves in the waiting room, they can simply click on the “Sign In” button on the screen, enter “villanova.zoom.us”, and enter their Villanova credentials.  Instructors can admit participants from the waiting room by clicking on Manage Participants and then clicking admit next to the name of the person waiting
• See additional tips and more information from the Vice Provost in the Securing Your Zoom Meeting document attached below

Getting Started

Advanced Features

Additional Tips

Creating On-Call Student Gallery

Want to limit the webcams displayed to just a few students who are "on-call?" See this video by Alvin Wong from UNIT.

Turning Off Attendee Waiting Notifications

Tip: Want to turn off those "attendees are waiting" notifications when students join a meeting before it starts? Log into the Settings Tab on villanova.zoom.us Scroll down the page to the “Email Notification” section on the “Meeting” tab (near the bottom of the page) You’ll see an option to turn off “When attendees join meeting before host.”

Polling

Use the Poll Template below to create questions ahead of time. NOTE this template can only be used when you first create the meeting at villanova.zoom.us or when you Edit this Meeting in Blackboard. If you wish to add a poll to a meeting that has been created at villnova.zooml.us, you will need to enter questions manually as described below.

USING THE TEMPLATE (two options):

1. When you first create a meeting:

     Enter your questions into the template and then create your meeting so that you can upload it at that time--look for poll option at the bottom of       the page.

2. Editing a meeting already scheduled in Blackboard:

• Add your questions and answer choices to the template attached below
• Log into Blackboard and click on the Zoom Tool and then go to upcoming Meetings tab
• Click on hyperlinked name of meeting you want to add a poll to
• Scroll down to bottom of the page and click on "import .csv"
• Select your saved, completed template and it will upload.
   

Manually Creating Zoom Polls AFTER a Meeting Has Been Created (villanova.zoom.us)

1.Go to villanova.zoom.us and click on Meetings and locate the meeting you want to add a poll to

2. Click on the Edit option.

3. Scroll down the page and click the blue Save button to move on to the next page

4. Scroll to the bottom of that page where you will see a link to "Add" a poll. 

5. Enter your question and add another if you wish but keep in mind that questions added together here will display as a set meaning you won't be able to display just question 1 and then show question 2 later in the session etc.--all questions will display at the same time.

Breakout rooms break up a long lecture, keep the class engaged, and allow students to participate in group work. The best practices for managing this group work differed between the traditional and online classroom. Suggestions included:

• Before class (or in your syllabus), post a one-page “guidance” for breakout room activities. Tell students, explicitly, what you want them to do in the breakout room; how you expect them to report their results to the class at large; and how much time they will spend in the breakout room.
• Post any documents you intend the students to review before the lecture begins.  Screen share does not work when students are in breakout rooms.
• Zoom will allow you to pre-assign breakout room groups. You can do this before lecture begins, or during lecture – but it cab quite stressful to divide your class into groups during class. Alternatively, Zoom will divide your class into random, roughly evenly sized breakout groups.
• You can set a timer for breakout rooms to expire, or you can simply manually end them. It is best to let the students know your plan before you enter the breakout rooms. You can include this information on the breakout room guidance. Zoom also allows you to give students a warning before the breakout rooms expire.
• Allow the groups to work a bit before popping into a breakout room.
• If you record your lectures, turn off recording during breakout sessions. In Zoom, breakout sessions are not recorded. Instead, Zoom records only the sound/video of the host during a breakout session. Recording will pause automatically if the host moves into one of the breakout rooms and restart automatically when the host returns to the main session.
• Tell students to stay in their breakout rooms for the duration of the breakout session.  

Recording audio to accompany a PowerPoint or screen sharing presentation is the simplest way to create a recorded lecture. Villanova provides faculty and staff with Mediasite accounts which allows you to record your screen (whether using PowerPoint slides or navigating through websites). Mediasite is the same program that records and stores lectures that are recorded in the classroom but it also allows you to make recordings from your computer via a desktop recorder app that you can download to your computer for use in recording lectures on your own. Use the links below to download the player to your computer, get started recording your lectures and trouble-shoot any issues that may arise using the user guides.

Should students inquire about what is needed to view a Medisite recording on their computer, this link details the system requirements for viewing on both a PC and a Mac.

If you'd like to add closed captions to your video, you'll need to record your presentation in Zoom first. Please see the directions below for capturing the closed captions and adding them to your video file in Mediasite.

CALI.org (Computer Assisted Legal Instruction) offers tutorials on a variety of legal topics. Created by professors and librarians from across the country, each CALI "lesson" provides content with quiz questions on that content embedded in the lesson. Faculty can assign a lesson from the site or create their own "Lesson Link" which allows you to select lessons to use in your course, generating customized links for each lesson which can then be posted to Blackboard. The benefit of using Lesson Link rather than just linking to a lesson directly on the CALI site is that Lesson Links allow you to track individual student completions, view which questions were missed by each student and the class as a whole and see how long it took for each student to complete the lesson. CALI also provides a list of lessons linked to specific concepts in many legal subject areas. See the links below or contact Lori Corso for more information.

To set up a faculty CALI account:

Student Instructions for Accessing CALI--Post to Blackboard Along with Lesson Link:

When posting a CALI link to Blackboard, please paste the following account setup instructions as well as not every student has signed into CALI before:

CALI Student Account Registration:

1. Go to www.cali.org

2. Click “Register” on the right

3. Complete the form using the authorization code: VILNOVstu223 (it is case sensitive)

4. Please use your law school email address

5. Click “I agree” and then click “Create New Account”

Additional resources provided by CALI: