Support from FASE's Education Technology Office

How do I administer Zoom in my course?

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This guide provides an overview of how to manage Zoom in your Quercus course, starting from deciding whether Zoom is right for you and ending with sharing (and archiving) your recordings. To access and use Zoom, login to the UofT Zoom Portal.

Zoom is now integrated into Quercus! As of August 2022, Quercus offers the ability for instructors and students to connect directly within their Quercus course using a new integration. 

1. Decide if Zoom is the right webinar tool for you

A Zoom Meetings pro account is currently available to faculty, staff, and teaching assistants. While the license is paid for by the University, it is NOT integrated into Quercus (and will not be for the Fall 2021 term). For the most up to date information about Zoom policies at FASE, please see the Engineering Faculty and Student Hub's Zoom Meetings resource page (requires UTORid login). For other supported options, see which webinar tool should I use (and when)?

What are the other implications of not being integrated? there is no connection to Quercus. Students will join sessions without being authenticated to a U of T service (they can request a Zoom account via the UofT Zoom Portal too) and can enter any name they wish. If tracking attendance is important to you, this is something to consider. You might encourage students to join with the names as they are displayed in the Quercus course. You might also remind students that they can change their display name by visiting UTORauth's name change tool.

Zoom has multiple levels and types of accounts; the U of T Pro account for Zoom Meetings includes:

U of T Zoom account includes: U of T Zoom account does not include:
  • Cloud storage of recordings (you record them locally on your computer and then upload them)
  • Functions associated with the Webinar tier of Zoom account
    • Including: roles (e.g. panelists); sessions over 300 people
  • Unlimited concurrent hosting (hosts are limited to two simultaneous sessions)


Can I only use one webinar tool? Many instructors will choose to use a combination of webinar tools for different activities (but when implementing tools consider the technological load being placed on students to learn multiple tools). This could mean that for larger sessions, you might choose to use MS Live because it is easier to manage large groups due to strong role moderation functionality. For smaller groups, you might use Zoom, for its ease of use and multiple camera features. However you choose to use webinar tools in your course, the key thing is to communicate to your students how they will be used and the expected etiquette for their use. For other supported options, see which webinar tool should I use (and when)?

2. Login to the UofT Zoom Portal

  1. To access and use Zoom, login to the UofT Zoom Portal.

2.1. Set up your Pro (paid) Zoom account on the U of T Zoom Portal

  1. Before navigating to the U of T Portal directly, visit the ACT Zoom Information webpage for detailed scenarios and instructions on what to do based on your current account situation. Many already have a Zoom account - this could be an individual, independent account, it could be an account created using your @utoronto.ca email, or it could be a paid account through your local IT department (please contact your department before migrating if you have questions).
  2. Decide whether to migrate an existing account. It is important for you to decide if you'd like to migrate your account to the U of T Portal as there is some loss of control and functionality when you join the portal as some settings are decided at the portal level and not at the individual account level.

If you are experiencing any issues with your administering your Zoom account, please contact the Enterprise Service Centre and submit a ticket using these options: IT Service Centre > Get Help > Audio/Video (AV) Support > General Support and Consultations).

2.1.1. What does the migration process look like?

If you have a FASE basic account or a pre-existing Zoom account using your @utoronto.ca email, you are likely looking to migrate your account (scroll down to Scenario IV: Existing free zoom account using U of T email).

For a full guide, see How do I convert an existing @utoronto.ca basic Zoom account to a U of T pro account?

3. Download the Zoom Desktop Client

You can download the desktop version of Zoom for your respective operating system. Settings for Zoom are still managed through the web interface.

4. Encourage your students to create a Zoom account

Students can now also request a Zoom Pro account. If you plan to lock your sessions to those with a @Utoronto.ca domain email, then students must activate their accounts or they will not be able to enter your Zoom session.

  1. Send your students an announcement (before or early in the term) reminding them that Zoom sessions require authentication; encourage them to visit the UofT Zoom Portal to create their accounts.
  2. See Prof. Parsch's one-page, scenario based instruction sheet, Zoom Account Instructions for Students (attached below).

5. Schedule Zoom Sessions

Before scheduling Zoom session, we recommend reviewing the Zoom session settings that you can modify for your sessions.

  1. Visit the U of T Zoom Portal to access your Zoom account. There might some UTM messaging on this site; this is ok! We're using the UTM portal across the University now.
  2. If possible, try to schedule a recurring meeting as it uses the same URL and meeting ID (see how to schedule a recurring meeting). If you have irregular sessions, you can schedule the recurring meeting and then edit the sessions start/end times individually.
  3. You can also schedule one-off meetings using Zoom's How to Schedule a Meeting.
  4. After you've scheduled a session, access the session link and share this so that others can join your meeting.
  5. During a session, you might need to send a last minute invitation (or perhaps you're inviting an external guest).
  6. For more, see UTM's guides to Security and Managing Participants.

Avoid "Zoom Bombing"! Internet trolls are using Zoom to share inappropriate content by taking over screens during sessions. To prevent this, we are recommending that you limit who can share content to only the host. Hosts can disable this option in their settings or the Admin controls of a call. You can either change this in your pre-meeting Settings or in the in-call admin settings for Share Screen > Advanced Sharing Settings. Also recommended is to not share the meeting session URL publicly. For more, see how to keep uninvited guests out of your Zoom event.

6. Share links to the sessions to your course

Since Zoom is not integrated into Quercus, you have to select a communication method by which to share the session URLs to your course. You can do this by sharing your session link via your Quercus course by:

  1. Creating a new page (see How do I create a new page in a course?) to host all your sessions. You could organize these by date, so that students can easily find where they are supposed to be.
  2. Using the Quercus calendar tool and adding the session links to the calendar items (see How do I use the Calendar as an instructor?)
  3. Enable and use the Redirect tool (see adding the redirect tool) to add a link to your recurring Zoom session on your Course menu. Although this option provides quick access, if you have a password for the session, you will have to share that to students in an alternate way.

Can I send the Session Information by email? In general, we are not recommending sending session links by email, as they are easily lost and hard to find right before a session. You could consider using Outlook, but this tool is less popular amoung students and would require some communication to ensure that all have it on their calendars.

7. Record your Sessions

FASE is encouraging the recording of all synchronous sessions. After recording, you might choose to use an editing tool (see our guides to editing software, including no cost solutions).

  1. Include a statement on what type of recording you are doing and how it will be shared with the class (see CTSI's suggested statements on video recording). You can add this to your syllabus or share directly with students.

In addition to using a built-in recording tool, you might also screen capture your session concurrently (e.g. using Snagit or other screen capture tool). As always, test this out - it might increase your processing load more than your computer likes. A benefit of this is that you have your recording locally and it's exactly what the students saw during the session.

7.1. Record a zoom session locally

  1. At the beginning of each session, select to begin a local recording by selecting the record option (see how to record a Zoom meeting). Note that if you choose to save your recordings to Zoom cloud storage, recordings are only stored for 120 days.
  2. Block a few minutes after each session (approx. 20) to download and upload your videos to a video hosting service.

7.2. Record a session to the Zoom Cloud

We recommend recording the Zoom session locally and the uploading your recordings to a streaming service because content saved in the Zoom cloud is bound by a retention policy.

  1. At the beginning of each session, select to begin a recording to the Zoom cloud.
  2. Be aware of the Zoom Cloud recording retention policy. Any recording saved to a user's Zoom Cloud (this does not affect content stored via OneDrive, MyMedia, MS Stream, or alternate cloud/streaming tools) will be automatically deleted one year after the recording is made.

Temporary cloud storage is now available for all provisional U of T Zoom Education accounts up to half a gig of storage with a 120 day retention period – in other words, content will automatically be removed 120 days after uploading. For full details, see ACT's Zoom Information website.

8. Upload your recordings to a streaming service

Please do not upload your videos directly to your Quercus course shell. Not only does this limit the functionality of playback for your video, it will quickly use up your limited (3 gb) course quota.

  1. If you used Zoom cloud storage, download your recording from the UofT Zoom Portal > Recordings.
  2. Select your preferred video hosting service (see the comparison chart of different video streaming services commonly used at FASE).
    1. If you are open to the idea that video content can be accessed by the entire U of T community, then we would recommend Microsoft Stream (includes auto captions).
    2. If you would prefer that videos are a little less accessible, then we would recommend MyMedia, which generates a link per video that does not appear in any searches (but does not include auto captioning; see How do I add automatic captions for MyMedia videos?)

Are you using MyMedia? If you select to use MyMedia, then we also suggest requesting a course MyMedia account that all members of the teaching team upload their videos to (see Request a personlized MyMedia account; this will create a ticket for this request). This way, all the course videos are available in one spot; it is easier to keep track of them and to have more than one person upload content. Details to include in the request: If you are requesting an account, provide the name of the account (e.g. course code) and the sponsoring/contact email; usually the lead instructor.

9. Share the recording to your course

After uploading your recording, copy the URL (or embed code) for the video and share it via your Quercus course.

  1. Using MyMedia? See how to share your videos in MyMedia to Quercus. You can also create MyMedia folders to organize your videos.
  2. Using MS Stream? See how to share your videos in Microsoft Stream. Ensure that for each video, the viewing permissions are enabled for allowing everyone in your company to view the video (see permissions and privacy in Microsoft Stream).

10. Archiving your recordings for future use

After you've uploaded your content to a video host (see which video host is right for you), your content is archived. You will be able to access your videos for future terms, using the same links (helpful if you're copying your Quercus course term to term).

You might also consider backing up any particularly key files on your OneDrive.

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