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Zoom is a great tool for facilitating synchronous communication with your students, especially for online courses. Though Zoom does not feature an "always on" course room, your students can still utilize their own FSU Zoom accounts to meet with one another to collaborate on group projects, form study groups, and more without your having to schedule and be present in these student meetings.
This article details how you can provide your students with easy access to their Zoom accounts, and create a discussion topic in your Canvas course to provide a space for your students to easily share their Zoom meeting links with each other. Once you have followed the directions in this article, your students will be able to meet independently with ease.
Step 1: Activate the My FSU Zoom navigation item in your course site
Enable the My FSU Zoom navigation item on your course navigation menu. Similar to the original Zoom navigation item, the My FSU Zoom item starts out as an inactive, hidden item and must be turned on within your course's Settings menu. Once you have activated the My FSU Zoom item, your students will be able to click on it in the course navigation menu and be taken to the login page for their individual FSU Zoom account.
Your students must click the Sign In button to access their individual FSU Zoom account. After logging in with their FSU credentials, your students can schedule meetings using their own Zoom profile.
Step 2: Setup a Discussion item for students to share their meeting links
Next, students need to be able to share their meeting's "join URL" with one another. The best way to do this is to create a Discussion item within your Canvas course site for students to post their join URLs.
In the discussion item's directions, we recommend including instructions for your students detailing:
- how to access their individual Zoom accounts and schedule meetings
- how to share their meetings' join URLs in the discussion board
- how to start their meetings at the scheduled time so that classmates can join them
Please feel free to link to some of the materials provided within this article. We also recommend checking the Allow Threaded Replies option in the discussion item's settings and leaving the other items unchecked.
The screenshot below is an example of what this discussion item will look like with students using it.
Once your Zoom discussion item is set up, we recommend pinning the discussion topic to the top of your course's Discussion area to keep it easily visible in your course site.
Now, your students will be able to utilize it for the duration of the semester to contact each other for Zoom Meetings without the need for further instructor input. Students need only post their meeting's join URL and their classmates can then copy/paste the join URL into their browser to be able to join the meeting. Alternatively, students can post their meeting's join URL as clickable, hyperlinked text. Each student will be able to join the meeting with the browser-based, desktop, or mobile versions of Zoom by simply clicking on that join URL text.
We recommend that your students make sure they are subscribed to the Zoom discussion item so that they receive a notification each time a classmate posts to it. Students must also make sure to start their Zoom meetings at the time they have scheduled the meeting to start.
