Zoom video conferencing is available for NMSU Administrative Meetings and work-from-home needs as well as in all NMSU Canvas courses for course instruction. In light of recent reports of zoombombing, use the following best practices for Zoom meeting security to have a successful Zoom meeting without unwanted interruption.
Schedule your Recurring Course Meeting in Canvas:
For class meetings and office hours restricted to a single course, create all of your course Zoom meetings using the Zoom integration in Canvas. You will find a link for Zoom in the course navigation menu in each of your Canvas courses.
Follow the guide for using Zoom in Canvas.
Schedule a Meeting or Recurring Meeting for Administrative Meetings:
When possible schedule each meeting with a randomly generated meeting ID. It is a best practice to schedule your meeting and generate a random meeting ID for your Zoom meetings, so it can't be shared multiple times. Only use your Personal Meeting ID for on-demand immediate meetings and do not share your Personal Meeting ID publicly. Your Personal meeting ID is basically an ongoing meeting that's always available.
The exception to this is for your advertised “drop-in” open Zoom meetings for tutoring, advising, etc. For these types of meetings, schedule a recurring meeting with "No Fixed Time".
Restrict Screen Sharing:
To give instructors/meeting hosts more control over what participants/students are seeing and prevent them from sharing random content, the default screen-sharing setting for NMSU Zoom is"Host Only". Meeting hosts/teachers by default are the only ones who can share content in class.
You can still allow students/participants to share their screens. If students/participants need to share their work with the rest of the Zoom meeting participants, you can allow screen sharing in the host meeting controls while in your Zoom meeting. Click the arrow to the right of the Share Screen button on the Zoom meeting menu and then choose Advanced Sharing Options.
Under "Who can share" choose All Participants and close the window.
You can also change the default sharing option to All Participants in your main Zoom settings in order to change the default sharing settings for every meeting that you schedule.
For more information see Managing participants in a meeting.
Enable The Waiting Room:
The waiting room feature is enabled for all participants by default in NMSU's Zoom.
The Waiting Room feature is one of the best ways to protect your Zoom meeting and keep out troublemakers and unwanted attendees. It is especially important to leave the waiting room feature enabled if you will be holding publicly advertised “drop-in” meetings for tutoring, advising, or general questions.
Disable Join Before Host:
Participants/students will be prevented from joining the meeting without the host present. Participants/students that attempt to join a meeting before the host will see a pop-up that says "The meeting is waiting for the host to join".
For more information see Join Before Host.
Lock down the chat
Meeting hosts/instructors can restrict the in-class chat so students cannot privately message other students. We recommend controlling chat access in your in-meeting toolbar controls (rather than disabling it altogether) so students can still interact with the teacher as needed.
For more information see Controlling and disabling in-meeting chat.
Remove a participant:
If someone who’s not meant to be there somehow manages to join your Zoom meeting, you can easily remove them from the Participants menu. Hover over their name, and the Remove option (among other options) will appear. Click to Remove, and they won’t be allowed back in.
For more information see Managing participants in a meeting.
Additional In-Meeting Controls:
Meeting hosts/instructors have additional in-meeting options to control your Zoom meeting:
Disable video:
Turn off a participant’s/student’s video to block distracting content or inappropriate gestures while the meeting is in session.
For more information see Managing participants in a meeting.
Mute students:
Mute/unmute individual participants/students or mute everyone all at once. Mute Upon Entry (in your settings after you login to Zoom) is also available to minimize distracting noise and participants join your Zoom meeting.
For more information see Mute All And Unmute All.
Attendee on-hold:
An alternative to removing a participant/student, you can momentarily disable their audio/video connections. Click on the attendee’s video thumbnail and select Put on hold to activate.
For more information see Attendee on hold.
