Before your meeting:
- Dress professionally. Dress for your video conference the way you would for an in-person meeting.
- Practice hosting. Zoom is easy to use, but you do not want to explore it’s features during a live conference. Practice scheduling and inviting people to meetings. Learn how to mute, unmute and how to re-assign the host role.
- Check “enable join before host” in the schedule window. Otherwise, let your invitees know they will not be able to join if you have not yet started the meeting.
- Check your internet connection. If possible, choose wired over wireless for video conferencing.
- Plan for the meeting to be in a quiet location.
- Adjust your lighting. Do not sit directly in front or beside a bright light source, or all your audience will see is the bright light and a shadowy figure.
- Think about your background. If you are at home, you do not want your audience to see distracting personal effects.
- Know what documents you plan to share. Zoom prioritizes the shared item to the bandwidth. This can reduce the other video feeds’ quality, so share only as necessary. If you plan on using the “Share your Desktop” feature, remember that everything on your desktop will be visible to your audience, including every pop-up email and private message. Be sure to log-out of your email or any other application that you may not want seen by your audience.
- Make sure to let your audience know if you will be recording the session. See this section of the staff website for specific guidance about recording sessions. (Use your email username and password to access.)
- If you are inviting someone to Zoom and he/she is new to Zoom, it may be helpful for you check “enable join before host” in the scheduling section of Zoom.
During your meeting:
- Mute your microphone when necessary. Zoom has a “Mute Microphone” option that cuts down on ambient feedback. When there is a lot of discussion going on, you will turn this off. Mute yourself when listening to a presenter. Keep in mind that if your mic is on, everyone will be able to hear what you are doing, whether it be typing or chewing.
- Turn off your camera at appropriate times. Many people don’t realize that you can and should turn off your camera during times when you don’t want fellow meeting attendees to see you. Unless you are eating lunch together as a group, turn off your camera when you are eating, engaged in sidebar conversations at your local site, taking care of personal needs (such as blowing your nose) or anything else that may be distracting to others. When you click off your camera, Zoom will automatically replace your video image with the profile picture that you uploaded to your account. Otherwise, stay still and look attentive.
- Use Zoom’s chat function. Send a question to everyone or make it private to another participant.
- Speak to the camera and not the screen. Look at the camera when you speak, our tendency is to look at the person on the screen.