How do I set up Zoom meetings in Moodle?

Add individual meetings to the Zoom activity

After clicking Save and return to course above, you will be directed to your module’s homepage. Click on the Zoom LTI activity you just created to create your meetings:

1. Click Schedule a new meeting.
2. Under Topic, give a clear name to the meeting that helps students to understand which meeting is for which lecture. We recommend the following format: [module code – session type – date – any set info etc]. For example: ANML7006 Seminar DD/MM/YYYY Set 1.

How you name your meeting is critical, because any recordings you make will inherit the title of the meeting. Choosing clear labelling while you are setting up your meetings will save you time later and prevent you from deleting the wrong recording. In addition, unclear meeting names could result in students getting stuck waiting for the host to open the meeting and not realise they are in the wrong meeting.

3. Optionally enter a description for the meeting.
4. When: choose the date and time as shown in your timetable.
5. Duration: choose how long your lecture is going to last.
6. Video: optionally choose whether the webcam will on or off when you and your students enter the meeting.
7. Click Save.

You need to repeat steps 1-7 for as many lectures and other teaching sessions as your timetable shows, making sure every time that you name each meeting accordingly (i.e. meeting title reflects which seminar/lecture each meeting is for).

Good practice tip: Avoid recurring meetings and provide reasonable notice when setting up individual meetings.

Setting each meeting to recurring creates 12 occurrences of every meeting which will be a large number of links for students to wade through to find the link relevant to their set. You need to remember to add the meetings every week to avoid large numbers of meetings appearing on the page that will confuse students.

How do I add alternative hosts to the Zoom meetings?

Important: Running seminar sets as concurrent Zoom meetings

If you have organised your teaching in sets that are meant to run in Zoom by their respective seminar leaders, then it’s best for each set to be scheduled by the person who is going to run the session in Zoom and not all meetings to be scheduled by one person (e.g. the module leader). All meetings can be scheduled within the same Zoom LTI activity in a course, but each meeting should be scheduled by the person who is going to run and host the session.

This happens because of a known limitation of Zoom which doesn’t allow 3 or more meetings, scheduled by the same person, to run concurrently: when as a module leader you schedule 3 or more meetings for all seminar leaders, you are the host for these meetings. But your co-teachers in the module also become hosts when they start their respective meeting (they need that host status so they can start the meeting without the person who scheduled it having to be present). When co-teachers start the meetings as hosts at the same time, then Zoom gets confused and thinks that you are trying to start all of them, because you scheduled all the meetings and were registered as host in the system.

Seminar leaders and colleagues who have the co-teacher role (or any of these Moodle roles: Module Supervisor, Programme Lead, Subject Co-ordinator, Teaching Assistant, Subject Librarian) in your Moodle course will be added to each Zoom meeting you set up in that course as alternative hosts automatically, without the module leader having to add them manually.

The person scheduling the meeting may not see all of the co-teachers appear as alternative hosts right away, but your co-teachers will be added as alternative hosts to the meetings when they click on the Zoom LTI activity.

If the person who scheduled the meeting (host) is already present in the meeting, then alternative hosts will join the meeting as co-hosts. If the person who scheduled the meeting is not present, alternative hosts will start the meeting as hosts.

How do I remove alternative hosts?

If you unenroll colleagues from your module, their alternative host role in the Zoom LTI activity may still appear. To remove unwanted alternative hosts:

1. Click on the Zoom LTI activity in your module.
2. Click the three dots next to Schedule a new meeting.
3. Click Manage alternative hosts.
4. Click the X icon next to the email address of the colleague you wish to remove.

The removal will be saved automatically. There is no Save button.

How will my students access the Zoom meeting?

Before your first lecture, post an announcement in the Announcements forum to let your students know that they will need to click Zoom LTI activity link from the top section of the course, then click Join for individual meetings:

How do my students access the Zoom meetings if I have assigned them to sets?

Students will be able to see the meeting links for all the sets you have created. To ensure the set meetings reflect the smaller groups to support their learning, remind students they have been allocated to sets and to only attend the meeting that has been created for their respective set. If a student attempts to attend a meeting not in their allocated set, they will be asked to leave that meeting or removed by the tutor.