Zoom: Schedule course meetings with the Moodle Zoom activity

Last Modified on 12/13/2023 3:43 pm EST

Instructors can create and manage Zoom Meetings associated with a Moodle course using the Zoom activity in Moodle. The advantages to using the Moodle Zoom activity instead of the Zoom web portal or desktop/mobile app are:

  • Course participants are automatically invited to meetings scheduled through the activity (and removed if they drop the course).
  • They can see all Zoom meetings for the course in one place on the course Moodle page. 
  • Moodle automatically creates course calendar events (with meeting links) for the Zoom meetings.
  •  Recordings for meetings scheduled through the activity are automatically uploaded to the course’s Panopto folder.

Note: Faculty and staff cannot schedule Webinars through the Moodle Zoom activity; use the Zoom web portal instead.

Before you start, you need the following:

Add a Zoom activity to your course

  1. Log into your course.
  2. Toggle the Edit Mode switch on.
  3. Click Add an activity or resource in the section where you want to place the Zoom activity (we recommend the top section).
  4. Choose Zoom from the menu.
  5. Give the activity a name (e.g., “Class Zoom Meetings”) and click Save and return to course.

Warning: Do not add more than one Zoom Activity to a course; schedule all Zoom meetings through a single activity.

Schedule course meetings

  1. Log into your course and click on the Zoom activity. 
  2. Click Schedule a New Meeting.
  3. You will see an embedded version of Zoom’s webpage for scheduling meetings. From here, provide the following meeting details (you can keep the default values for those not mentioned):
    • Topic: By default, Zoom uses the full course name. You may want to change this or distinguish between different types of meetings (e.g., lectures or office hours ). Make sure to include the course number, however. This ensures students won't confuse your Zoom meetings for those from another class.
    • Date and Time: For a one-time meeting, use When to set the date and start time and Duration to specify how long it lasts. For a recurring series of scheduled meetings, do the following:
      • Use When to set the date and start time for the first instance and Duration to set how long each meeting lasts.
      • Check the Recurring meeting box.
      • Use the Recurrence and Repeat settings to adjust how often the meeting repeats. For example, choose Weekly for a class that occurs at the same time on multiple days of the week. Then check the appropriate days in the Occurs On... menu. 
      • Set End Date to the day of your last meeting.
    • Enable focus mode when meeting starts: Focus mode limits participants' available actions and what they see from others (hosts and co-hosts retain all normal functionality). By checking this box, you will have the ability to turn on focus mode during a meeting. 
    • Breakout room pre-assign: Check this if you want to create breakout rooms and assign students to them before the meeting starts. Click on Create Rooms if you want to perform these actions within the Zoom Moodle activity. Click on Import from CSV if you would like to perform these actions in a spreadsheet first, then upload them to the Zoom Moodle activity.
    • Record the meeting automatically: Check this box and choose the In the Cloud option to automatically record a meeting and have it uploaded to Panopto. 
    • Advanced Options:
      • Schedule for: Usually Myself, which designates you as the host. If someone has given you scheduling privileges for their Zoom (e.g, a professor for whom you are a TA), you also may schedule a meeting where they are the host. 
      • Designate Alternative hosts: add co-hosts by using their brynmawr.edu email addresses (Haverford and Swarthmore individuals cannot be co-hosts for BMC Zoom meetings). 
  4. Click Save to finish setting up the meeting.

Note: Once the meeting has been created, you can upload Polls as a CSV. See Conducting polls in meetings for more information.

Manage course meetings

For a class meeting, you, a co-host, or alternative host can do the following actions:

  • Start the meeting.
  • Edit the time, date, recurrence or other meeting settings.
  • Delete the meeting (if a recurring meeting, Zoom will clarify whether you wish to delete only one or all instances).

All of your meetings (including personal meetings and those for other classes) will show up in the Zoom activity within Moodle. Click on the meeting title to see these options. 

Meeting recordings

Zoom meetings that have been scheduled through a Moodle Zoom activity and recorded to the cloud will automatically show up within the Moodle course and in Panopto. We recommend turning on automatic recording so you don't have to remember to do it manually. 

Turn on automatic recording

The easiest way to ensure they all get recorded.

  1. Log into your Moodle course and click the Zoom activity to open it.
  2. Click a meeting title.
  3. Go to Meeting Options.
  4. Select Record the meeting automatically and In the Cloud, then save any changes.

If this is a recurring meeting, settings will be applied to all instances of the meeting. If you scheduled each meeting separately, you will need to change the options for each meeting. 

Access through Zoom Activity

  1. Log into your Moodle course and open the Zoom activity.
  2. Click the Cloud Recordings tab.
  3. You will see a list of recorded class meetings, with two caveats:
    • It may take a few hours for a recently ended meeting to finish processing and appear here 
    • Recordings older than 60 days will be removed due to storage limitations; access them through Panopto instead. 

Access through Panopto

It takes slightly longer (but usually under 24 hours) for Zoom recordings to be ingested into Panopto, but they will remain on Panopto for at least three years before being archived.

Videos & Further Reading on Zoom

Questions?

If you have any additional questions or problems, don't hesitate to reach out to the Help Desk!

Phone: 610-526-7440 | Library and Help Desk hours
Email: help@brynmawr.edu | Service catalog
Location: Canaday Library 1st floor


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