Item: Zoom
Rating: 10
Author: Christy Mattingly

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Zoom removes distance as an obstacle for attending a class or meeting. One of my favorite features is the ability to dial into audio so if the person who is remote does not know how to troubleshoot their audio setup and the presenter is unable to hear them, a simple workaround is to dial in using a phone. If internet connectivity issues arise, attendees do not have to be re-invited to the meeting nor does the meeting have to be restarted. Recording can be used in conjunction with screen annotations to create online video content for courses as well.

Pros and Cons

Record a class and share via Google Drive for students to use as a review tool.
All participants can annotate on the shared desktop if desired.
Personal Meeting IDs can be set up for instant meeting creation (click to join).
Participants can stay engaged in a conversation via raising their hand in Zoom's Chat to indicate they have a question to ask or comment to make.

Needing to click the SSO button vs. logging in can be confusing for some users. Having text explaining that if you use Zoom as part of an institution, click the SSO button to sign in would alleviate obstacles to access (especially when the obstacle is keeping a professor from starting an online class session as they tend to forget these details).
The Speaker view and Gallery views buttons are confusing. It would be helpful to have some sort of menu showing what the result will look like, or a preview when hovering over the buttons. Such as, if you choose Gallery view....the screen will look like .
I would love to see the ability to add closed captions or subtitles to videos. We currently upload videos to YouTube to take advantage of their captioning features.

Return on Investment

Cost savings as less instructors are needed when one professor can teach synchronously to two locations.
Smaller class sizes at campuses where the class would otherwise have been cancelled due to low enrollment. Zoom allows us to combine classes.
Increased weight on faculty digital literacy and a high need for training to occur prior to teaching using what is a new mode to many folks: videoconferencing.

Zoom Rooms

I am not using Zoom Rooms at this time.

Alternatives Considered

I have used Google Hangouts, Skype, and TinyChat. Zoom makes it very easy to record and has so many utilities for creating content. Our students are now starting to request to "Zoom in" to class if they are unable to make an in-person session.

Other Software Used

Microsoft Office 2016, Moodle, Google Drive

Likelihood to Recommend

Zoom is well suited for teaching students located in multiple campuses. Although it can be used to connect all of the students from home, the potential for troubleshooting so many end points would be problematic. It is this reason we try to keep connections to a minimum and ask students to come to a campus location as their point of entry.

Zoom is less appropriate for teaching in groups if only one student is connecting remotely to a class. Depending on the setup of a classroom, there is a certain amount of choreography needed to engage the student in a conversation with a small group of students who are present in a course. We use online chats in our Moodle LMS to help with those types of discussions. Otherwise, all of the students in the group would have to connect to the Zoom session to use its Chat feature. This would also cause their video to appear which would need to be turned off and their participant window minimized by the instructor/presenter.

Zoom Past Obstacles of Distance and Time

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Zoom