Online Teaching with Zoom and Canvas

Tutorials and tips on recording lectures with Zoom and uploading to Canvas

How do I get a Zoom Account?

You can acquire a Zoom account by going to https://ucdavis.zoom.us -- this is the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Zoom instance. If you already have a Zoom account assigned by Metro IT, going to this link and clicking Sign In (not Sign Up -- and if you don't see a Sign In link, click your profile and sign out) will start the process to migrate you to the CAES instance. Click Yes, Click Acknowledge, wait for email, click email link.


Using Zoom

For faculty: http://kb.ucdavis.edu/?id=5640

For Students: http://kb.ucdavis.edu/?id=5642

Extra support: https://kb.ucdavis.edu and search on Zoom. Tons of articles for specific questions.


Recommended Hardware

Recommended Headset: Microsoft LX-6000 Noise-Canceling Headphones (Windows -- still looking for MacOS recommendation)

Recommended Webcam: Logitech 920 or 920S

Recommended Microphone: One of the above

Whiteboarding: Wacom Intuos, iPad, Tablet/2-in-1 Laptop


Basic Workflow

1) record your zoom video to the cloud or local (cloud gives you a transcript but so does AggieVideo along with Closed Captioning, #3 below)

2) download your zoom video from zoom website - recordings

3) upload your zoom video to AggieVideo (https://video.ucdavis.edu). It will take time to process. It will add transcript and students can click CC on the video to see closed captioning. http://kb.ucdavis.edu/?id=2088 for details

4) In Canvas, go to My Media, click the video, choose Actions - Publish and choose which course site to publish to. Files wind up in “media gallery” for that course site.

5) use canvas inbox or announcements to inform students of the video. “See Lecture 12 in ESM101A Media Gallery”

Pre-Recording your Lectures via Zoom

  1. Connect to a meeting by yourself (Start a New Meeting in the Zoom app)
  2. Test your audio and video. A good idea is to press Record and choose "Local Computer", talk for a bit, stop recording, and review the video to make sure things sound ok. When sharing your presentation, your audio is the most important piece as the presentation takes up 90% of the screen.
  3. Open your presentation and put it in presentation mode. If you have two displays, you can use Presenter mode.
  4. Share your Powerpoint presentation (or your display depending on whether you have other content besides Powerpoint you'll be using).
  5. Take a deep breath.
  6. Press Record, Record to Cloud (this will give you a transcript of text you can download)
  7. Talk through your slides.
  8. Press Stop Recording.
  9. In the Zoom website, go to Recordings. When the Recording is done processing, it will be available for download. The MP4 is the full video. The transcript may take longer to process.


Pre-Recording your lectures by Narrating Powerpoint

Food Chain IT made this handy PDF of how to narrate your Powerpoint slides and export as a movie.

Narrate Powerpoint and Upload to Aggie Video

Difficulty: MacOS and Office 2016 will not export the movie properly. Upgrade to Office 2019.


Uploading your Videos to Canvas

This link covers the basics of tieing AggieVideo (Kaltura) to Canvas and populating your site’s media gallery. The first half of the instructions below are things you need to do once, like adding the Media Gallery and allowing Kaltura to talk to Canvas.

http://kb.ucdavis.edu/?id=2088

General notes here:

Canvas's My Media is unique to the user account. Users upload their own media here or have it connected via Aggie Video.

Canvas's Media Gallery contains the media shared to the course.


Metro IT Recorded Zoom/Canvas Demonstration

Video: https://video.ucdavis.edu/media/t/0_eg9shsus

00:00 Zoom application walkthrough

24:00 Pre-Recording lectures (Scheduling basics and settings, invitations, waiting rooms, recording)

55:00 Uploading to Aggie Video (Please see Uploading your Videos to Canvas also)

1:09 Differences between Canvas Zoom and https://ucdavis.zoom.us

1:11 Making Zoom polls for your class in https://ucdavis.zoom.us


Live Online Instruction Tips

Equations: If you have equations, prepare them in your slides or make sure you have a way to show students your whiteboard. Zoom has a whiteboard app and we have USB writing tablets for loan (see Recommended Hardware above). Your standard cameras may not pick up an office whiteboard well.

Waiting Room: Enable your waiting room to have students see a meeting room notice of your choosing (you can customize in Settings and this customization will be applied to any meeting you use a waiting room) but not be in the meeting until you arrive. This lets them know the meeting will happen (unlike unchecking Enable Join Before Host which just says "The host has not arrived for this meeting yet"). Once you've arrived, click Manage Participants, Admit All. Then click More... and uncheck Place attendee in waiting room so new students will enter directly to the meeting.

Chat: There is a chat window. You may want students to direct your questions there if you have a larger class that doesn't lend itself to people just speaking out. It helps to have someone monitoring the chat as, once you're lecturing, it can be hard to keep an eye on it.

Polling: Like participation quizzes, you can prep these before your class. Multiple or single answer questions, and you can have multiple questions in one poll, and you can have multiple polls per meeting. You click the Polling icon at the bottom of your Zoom window and choose which Poll you want to use at that time. Kind of like classroom clickers. Polls can be created in your Scheduled Meeting details after you've saved the meeting once. The poll creation tool is at the bottom. The Canvas Zoom tool requires a CSV upload. The https://ucdavis.zoom.us interface is more full featured and you can build a poll easily there.


Faculty Software Recommendations

For editing videos:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/ (Greg highly recommended, open/free software for iOS and Windows)

The Beginners Guide to Davinci Resolve 16

Camtasia - not free but great for advanced screen capture and lecture pre-recording. https://www.techsmith.com/store/camtasia/education

FFMPEG - For MacOS, video editor. https://www.ffmpegx.com/