Teaching Tools

Zoom allows all users to access a common Chat area during sessions. Here users can ask questions, communicate with each other, provide feedback and add emojis to their messages.  

To open the chat window, click on the Chat option in the Zoom toolbar. The chat window appears alongside the video display. You can create a separate floating chat box by clicking on the down arrow at the top of the chatbox and selecting Pop Out.

Type your message in the text area of the chat window. Your message will be seen by Everyone by default. Click on  Everyone to select a recipient to send a private message to that person only.

Hosts can control who participants can chat with via the chat window by clicking the More (…) option on the bottom of the chat panel.  The options available are:

• No one – chat is disabled for everyone except the Host.
• Host only – Participant messages will only be seen by the Host of the session.
• Everyone publicly – all chat messages are public unless the Participant chooses to send a private message to the Host. Private messaging between Participants is disabled.
• Everyone publicly and directly – Participants can now choose to send public messages or a private message to any Participant in the session.

You can change the Participant access to any of these options at any time within the session.

Additional guidance on the Chat Tool in Zoom is available.  

Zoom allows you to create up to 50 Breakout Rooms in a session. This can be useful for group work, focus groups, or generating smaller group discussions to gather opinions and ideas.  

Breakout rooms must be enabled within your Zoom settings at ed-ac-uk.zoom.us before a session in order to use them. This can be found under Settings> In Meeting (Advanced).  Enable the Breakout Room option.

To start an ad-hoc breakout session, click on the Breakout Rooms option in the Zoom toolbar. A pop-up window appears allowing you to choose the number of rooms to create and to choose an option for assigning students to a room:

• Assign automatically – Zoom assigns Participants to a room.
• Assign manually – the Zoom Host assigns each Participant to a room.
• Let participants choose room – Participants have a free choice between the breakout rooms.

Once you have chosen an assignment option, click on Create. At this point, you can now make the manual assignment of students to rooms or adjust the automatic assignment. Once happy click on Open All Rooms.

Ad the Host, you are assigned to a room but are free to join any of the rooms – hover over the Participant count for the room and click on Join. Once in a breakout room, click on Leave Room followed by Leave Breakout Room to return to the main room.

If it is not visible, click on the Breakout Rooms option in the Zoom toolbar again to see the overview of the breakout rooms. Click on Close All Rooms to return everyone back to the main room.

Additional guidance on using Breakout Rooms in Zoom is available. 

You can also set up Breakout Rooms while scheduling a meeting in the Zoom Meeting scheduler within the Zoom Learn Integration.  

For further guidance see pre-assigning participants to Breakout Rooms . 

Zoom allows you to create single, or multiple answer polls that can be used to gather feedback, test learning or increase user engagement during presentations. Polls can be set to anonymous or named responses. You can create up to 25 polls per meeting with each poll allowing a maximum of 10 questions.  

Polling must be enabled within your Zoom settings at ed-ac-uk.zoom.us before a session in order to use the tool. This can be found under Settings> In Meeting (basic). Enable the Meeting Polls/Quizzes option.

Polls can be uploaded via CSV file while scheduling a meeting. We advise using the Polling template file provided by zoom at the bottom of the Meeting Scheduling page.  Zoom polls can also be created at ed-ac-uk.zoom.us and enabled for all meetings automatically. This means that you will always have the same poll pre-saved into each zoom meeting that you schedule. 

The Polling Template is visible on the screen showing the details of the meeting once you have created it. You can return to this view at any time by following the Zoom link in your course and clicking on the meeting name in the Upcoming Meetings tab.

To start a poll, click on the Polling option in the Zoom toolbar. A pop-up window appears. What happens next depends on how you have decided to author the questions.

• Polls created ahead of the meeting, and uploaded to Zoom, should be available for you to choose from. Click on the name of the poll to be used and click on Launch Poll to display it to your students.
• If no questions were uploaded to the meeting in advance, then you can click Add a Question to start creating polls on the fly. This takes you to the Zoom website where you can author Single Choice or Multiple Choice questions. Once you have created your question(s) click on Save. The poll will now appear in the Zoom pop-up window and you can click on Launch Poll to display it to your students.

Students have on chance to submit an answer when the poll is open. You can see the results come in via the Polling pop-up window. To close the poll, click on End Poll. To show the results of the poll to your students, click on Share Results.

Additional guidance on using Polling in Zoom is available. 

Polling results can be downloaded after the session by Generating reports for Polling and Attendance.

Zoom allows you to share a range of applications or an entire screen during a presentation. Basic screen sharing allows you to share an entire screen, or open a blank whiteboard for use in the meeting. Advanced options allow you to present local video, audio-only, or share from an additional camera.  

To start a screen share, click on the Share Screen option in the Zoom toolbar. A pop-up window appears, you can choose to share a whiteboard (see next section), your entire screen/desktop, or any open application. If required, click on the Share sound and/or Optimize for video clip and then click on the window/application you wish to share.

Once sharing, you can click on the Annotate option in the Zoom toolbar to add annotations to your shared screen (these are the same as for the whiteboard described in the next section). Any annotations made through Zoom are not added to your original screen/application/file. To save the annotation view, click on Save while showing the Annotation toolbar. To stop sharing, click on Stop Share.

Screen sharing a PowerPoint presentation on a windows machine. 

Screensharing a Keynote from a macOS machine. 

Zoom also allows you to share multiple screens simultaneously in a meeting.  

In-Meeting Whiteboard

The zoom whiteboard can be found under the Screen Sharing menu in a Zoom meeting. This allows all users to annotate, stamp, and add text to a shared space or image via the annotation tools. 

Whiteboard must be enabled within your Zoom settings at ed-ac-uk.zoom.us before a session in order to use the tool. This can be found under Settings> In Meeting (basic). Enable the Whiteboard option. Additionally, you can also allow for the whiteboard to be downloaded as a PNG file or a PDF. 

To start using the whiteboard, click on the Share Screen option in the Zoom toolbar. A pop-up window appears, click on Whiteboard followed by Share. Your screen switches to show a whiteboard. You have several options available:

• Select – allows you to select an item to resize it or move it around the whiteboard.
• Text – allows you to add typed text to the whiteboard.
• Draw – click on this to select one of the twelve drawing tools available – lines, arrows, and shapes.
• Stamp – allows you to add one of six icons to the whiteboard.
• Spotlight – allows you to choose one of three ways of highlighting areas of the whiteboard.
• Eraser – allows you to remove elements from the whiteboard.
• Undo/Redo – either removes or adds the last annotation made.
• Clear – allows you to remove all drawing on the whiteboard or just your own annotations or just the participant annotations.
• Save – saves the whiteboard as a PNG file but you can also choose to save it as a PDF.

Click on Stop Share to close the whiteboard.

Shared Whiteboard

Shared whiteboards can be accessed via ed-ac-uk.zoom in the left hand menu. These whiteboards allow you to add other users and collaborate in a free whiteboard space outside of a zoom meeting. Users can be added to the whiteboard with a range of different permission levels:

• Editor- can add, remove and edit content.
• Commenter- can leave comments on the whiteboard but cannot add or edit content.
• Viewer- can view the whiteboard but cannot comment, add or edit content
• Co-owner- can add, remove and edit content as well as being able to delete the board, share with others and lock the board when not in use.

The user who initially created the whiteboard is the whiteboard owner and has control over who the whiteboard is shared with if it is deleted and when it is available for use via locking and unlocking. 

Users can add image files, stamps, text, drawings, and sticky notes by using the floating annotation menu.

Additional guidance on using the Whiteboard tool and Annotation Toolbar in Zoom is available.