Before you start

Think about your teaching, and be sure you cannot use other tools like the Moodle Forum before you organise a web meeting.

Remember that students (or colleagues) may not be in the same timezone as you, may not have a great internet connection, and that it is harder to search a video than a text.

Why use Zoom Meetings Manager?

Zoom is a video and web conferencing platform that gives teachers the ability to host online sessions. At LSE, Zoom is used to hold online lectures, office hours, online revision sessions, online PC/software lab sessions and to bring remote researchers, experts and guest speakers into the classroom. Participants will need at least a microphone and a webcam is recommended. There is also a Zoom app for iOS and Android devices.

This guide covers how to schedule a meeting from within Moodle. For guidance on how to use the Zoom application independently of Moodle, see How to sign in to Zoom and the Zoom getting started guides.

Auto-link Zoom recordings to the correct course section in Echo 360

• Recordings of teaching sessions scheduled using the Zoom meetings manager in Moodle will automatically be copied and assigned to the correct Echo 360 course section. It will no longer be necessary for teachers to share recordings from their personal library to the course section in Echo 360 if using the Zoom Meetings Manager.

• For recordings to be automatically assigned to Echo 360 course sections, the Zoom session host needs to be registered as a teacher on the same course in both Moodle and Echo 360.

Schedule Zoom teaching sessions on behalf of colleagues

• It's now possible to schedule on behalf of others from within Moodle.

• Moodle course editors should avoid using the alternative hosts feature when scheduling meetings on behalf of teachers.

Provide easy access to Zoom links

• Use Zoom Meetings Manager to ensure students always have easy access to the correct Zoom links via their Moodle course. Zoom Meetings Manager automatically collects all Zoom session links for a course in one place.

• Zoom meeting links only sent by email can easily be lost.

Enable registration for recording attendance

• Enabling Zoom session registration for taking attendance is now possible from within Moodle.

Step 1: Add the Zoom Meetings Manager to your Moodle course

You will only need to do this step once for each Moodle course. Do not perform steps 1 and 2 for each and every Zoom meeting (see the optional step 5 below). Jump to Step 3 if the Zoom Meetings Manager has already been added to your course.

Make sure you have previously signed into Zoom using your LSE account before starting. This ensures you have a valid LSE Zoom account.

Once you have your Zoom account, sign into Moodle and go to your course page and Turn editing on. Scroll to the section where you want the Zoom Meetings Manager to be displayed, click Add an activity or resource and pick Zoom Meetings Manager.

Open

Step 2: Zoom Meetings Manager Settings

Provide a meaningful name for the Zoom Meetings Manager in the context of your Moodle course. e.g. “All EC201 Zoom Meetings”. You may also find it useful to add a Description with instructions to students on how to use Zoom. For example, they should download the Zoom app and test it works ahead of your lecture/class.

You can ignore the rest of the settings and click “Save and return to course”.

Step 3: Ensure that Zoom recordings are linked to the correct course in Echo 360

Now that you have added the Zoom meetings manager to your course you will need to create a link between your Moodle course and Echo 360 to ensure that all Zoom recordings are automatically transferred to the correct course in Echo 360.

Please follow this guide to adding a link Echo 360 lecture recordings to ensure the link is made. This link will be added to your course homepage, but can be hidden once you have created it. It is however essential that this is added to the course.

Unlinking last year's Echo 360 course section

You will possibly also need to unlink the previous year's Echo 360 course section from your current Moodle course. Unlinking will prevent new recordings from being published to last year's course area in Echo 360 as well as this year's. Please see the Echo 360 guide on how to unlink Echo360 Sections and Classes from the LMS (Moodle).

You will only need to do this if you have added links to Echo 360 lecture recordings during previous academic years.

Step 4: Scheduling a Zoom lecture/class or series

First click on your newly created Zoom Meetings Manager to open it and then click the “Schedule a New Meeting” button.

Open

You'll then see the standard form for creating a new Zoom meeting, which allows you to specify the settings described below.

Please note that the Eden Centre is not able to automatically schedule Zoom meetings based on the timetable because there is currently no method enabling Zoom to talk to the LSE timetabling system.

General Settings

Topic

Provide a name for the meeting, such as “EC201 Week 01 Lecture”, or “EC201 Week 01 Class 06 Meeting”. If using the recurring meeting setting (see below), you do not need to include the date or week number.

Always precede the name of the meeting with your course code. This makes it easier to identify relevant recordings at a later date.

When

Use When to set the start time for your meeting. Note that the date is in US format (Month/Day/Year). We are unable to change this!

Duration

Use Duration to say how long the room should be open for – make sure it includes some time at the beginning and also allows for a flexible finish time if necessary.

Time Zone

Check that this is set to “London”.

Recurring meeting

You can use Recurring meeting for lectures or classes as they usually happen on a regular basis. However, if you are recording the sessions, the week number cannot be included in the topic and so is not clearly identified. For this reason, you may wish to use the recurring meeting session for classes, but not for lectures.

Registration

Tick the “Required” box if you would like to record attendance at your Zoom meetings. Also see our separate “Recording attendance at Zoom meetings” guide.

Security

See our separate guide to Zoom meeting security, as well as below for information on the individual settings.

Meeting passcodes

In order to avoid unwanted visitors (Zoombombing), meeting passcodes are required when scheduling a Zoom meeting.

Waiting room

Enable the waiting room to screen who enters the meeting.

Only authenticated users can join meetings

Choose “Sign into Zoom” so only those who hold Zoom accounts can access the meeting (for example, guest speakers from other institutions and LSE users) or choose “LSE Users only”.

Video and Audio

The Host video On/Off and Participants video On/Off settings allow you to specify whether video is on or off at the start of the meeting.

Allowing both telephone and computer audio is recommended for maximum flexibility.

Meeting options

We recommend that you do not Enable join before host as students who join early and leave again may trigger a zoom recording upload. It may also prevent “zoombombing” (unwanted visitors in your meeting).

Advanced options

Schedule meetings on behalf of colleagues

You may wish to schedule a recurrent Zoom meeting on behalf of others, for example another teacher.

• Note that scheduling on behalf of others requires that you have first been given scheduling privileges by your colleague.

• Once scheduling privileges have been granted your colleague’s name will appear in the “Schedule For” drop-down list.

• Choose their name from the list to to make them the host for the meeting being scheduled.

If you need to schedule non-teaching meetings using the Zoom app or web portal, see our separate guide on scheduling meetings on behalf of others.

Alternative hosts

Use the alternative hosts feature to include additional colleagues as hosts for the meeting, for example a teaching assistant. This means that they will be able to start the meeting on your behalf, but remember that you, as the primary host, will not be able to host another meeting at the same time.

On completion, click Save.

After clicking save, click “Course Meetings” to see all the scheduled meetings for your course. To see the settings for a particular meeting click on the meeting topic (underlined below).

Step 5 (optional): Add a link from anywhere in Moodle to a specific Zoom session

If you would like to add a link to a particular Zoom meeting from a specific location within your Moodle course (e.g. in a section for MT week 07) you can add a Zoom meeting link using the URL (web link) tool. To add such a Zoom link, follow the steps below.

First, go to the details page for your Zoom session by clicking on the session title (e.g. highlighted below)

Right click on the “Join URL” address and click on “Copy link” or similar.

Add a new URL resource to your preferred Moodle course section. See our “URL (web link” guide for details on how to do this. Paste the URL you just copied into the “External URL” box (as below).

Click “Save and return to course”.

Step 6: Run a meeting in Zoom

4.1 To start the meeting, first go back to the Zoom Meetings Manager and click the Start button (circled below).

4.2 Jump to step 4.5 if you already have Zoom installed. If you are using Zoom for the first time, the Zoom desktop launcher will be automatically downloaded. You will need to run this launcher to install Zoom on your system.

4.3 Once the download has finished, locate it in your download folder (if necessary) and double click to start the installation. The download and install sequence will depend on your operating system and security settings.

4.4 Once the installation process has completed, you may need to click Launch Meeting to start the meeting.

4.5 You will then be prompted to Join with Computer Audio. Click this and the meeting room is then available and ready for participants.

4.6 See the Zoom getting started guides for more information on participating in or running a meeting. If you, as the host, end a meeting before its scheduled finish, you are prompted as to whether you are leaving or ending the meeting for all and reminded of the need to appoint another host if the room is staying open. Click End Meeting for All if you are sure.

Recording your meeting for publication in Echo360