Teaching and Learning Services supports instructors and staff via the TLS Support Portal for online classroom support and general help with Zoom. Carleton has implemented a campus-wide enterprise license for Zoom. The enterprise license will allow for single sign-on (SSO) and integration with Brightspace.
For information on accessing a Zoom meeting using a meeting ID, please visit our support page on Meeting IDs in Zoom.
What’s New with Zoom? – Winter 2024
Mandatory Minimum version update — Carleton Zoom users will be required to update their desktop client and mobile apps to the latest version as of February 19, 2024. These minimum version updates ensure that you receive the newest features, as well as any privacy and security enhancements. The first time you open Zoom after February 19, 2024, you will be prompted to make the update. Please log in a few minutes in advance of your meetings to allow time for the update. If you haven’t already done so, you can also set automatic updates for your desktop client to avoid manual updates in the future.
Live Captions are now available in breakout rooms! – Zoom has improved on it’s accessibility features by enabling machine generated captions in breakout rooms as well as the main meeting. Live captions are enabled by default in the Carleton Zoom account settings, and this feature can be enabled and disabled by the host within a meeting. Participants can toggle the captions on and off for their own view, and edit their appearance for increased accessibility.
Wooclap is integrated with Zoom – TLS is piloting a new Student Response System, Wooclap! This educational technology tool is integrated with Zoom through the Apps tab. To learn more about using Wooclap for online classes, please reach out to TLS for a consult.
Simplified consent notifications – Notifications for meeting recordings, livestreams and savable captions, are now simplified and condensed down into one smaller, less obtrusive notification displayed at the top of the meeting window. If there are multiple notices, they will be combined together. Participants can hover their cursor over or tap for more information about what data of theirs is being shared and with whom. Participants retain the ability to consent to remain in the meeting/webinar, or leave the meeting.
Q&A usability enhancement – Threaded comments to submitted questions in Q&A are capped at displaying 2 comments before they are hidden behind a View More option. This aims to make reading submitted questions and their responses easier by reducing how other questions and expanding threads affect each other in the Q&A window.
If you have any questions about these updates, or need support with any new or existing features, please reach out through the TLS Support Portal.
Zoom will be updating their Support Center on November 4 2023 with an improved customer experience for both self-service support and ticketing. As part of this update, the Support Site address will be moving to support.zoom.com.
Raise Hand Enhancement
The Raise Hand feature now automatically lowers a user’s raised virtual hand after they have unmuted their microphone and begun speaking. For more information on the Raise Hand feature, visit the Zoom support page Raising your hand in webinars and meetings.
Zoom Notes
Zoom Notes allows participants to collaborate on a shared document that persists through Zoom meetings as well as within the Zoom web portal or desktop client. For more information on Zoom Notes, visit the Zoom Notes support page.
Waiting Room Video
The Waiting Room has been upgraded to allow educators to display a custom video or message to students while they wait to join the meeting. For more information on how to use this Waiting Room feature, visit the Zoom support page Enabling and customizing the Waiting Room.
Screen Share Preview
Zoom now features a Screen Share Preview Window that takes the guess work out of knowing what content is being broadcast to your meeting participants. For more information on sharing your screen in Zoom, visit the support page Sharing your screen or desktop on Zoom.
Time Remaining Timer
The Time Remaining Timer displays the remaining time for a meeting scheduled with a fixed time, helping educators manage their schedules effectively. For more information on meeting timers, visit the Zoom support page Using meeting timers.
Breakout Rooms Based on Poll Results
This feature automatically assigns users to breakout rooms based on the results of a poll launched within Zoom. For information on this feature, visit the Zoom support page Creating meeting breakout rooms from poll results.
New Minimum Version Enforced: On August 29, 2023, all Carleton Zoom users will be required to upgrade to the newest version of the Zoom desktop client and mobile app. Updates ensure you receive the newest features, as well as any privacy and security enhancements. Please log in a few minutes in advance of Zoom meetings to allow time for the update. Setup automatic updates for the Zoom desktop client/app to save you time.
Zoom LTI Easy Scheduler: Managing your online office hours is now easier than ever with the Zoom LTI Easy Scheduler. Navigate to the Zoom LTI in the list of Tools in the Course NavBar, and select the Appointments tab. You can create your bookable schedule, and Zoom will automatically generate a meeting link for you and the student that books a timeslot.
Zoom Whiteboard: Promote collaboration in your Zoom meetings with Zoom’s new whiteboard. These whiteboard can be shared with other Carleton Zoom users and can be worked on both in and outside of meetings. These whiteboards may also be integrated with your course in the Zoom LTI. For assistance getting started with the new Zoom whiteboard, please submit a request to the TLS Zoom Support Team.
Zoom training is online: TLS has curated a playlist of Zoom Support Videos to assist instructors with using Zoom for online teaching. From Carleton University specific topics to general Zoom topics, this playlist is a great starting point for Zoom users looking to build their web conferencing skills.
New Minimum Version Enforced: On April 29th, 2023, all Carleton University Zoom users will be required to upgrade to the newest version of the Zoom desktop client and mobile app. These minimum version updates ensure that you receive the newest features, as well as any privacy and security enhancements. The first time you open Zoom after April 29th, you will be prompted to update. Please log in a few minutes in advance of your meetings to allow time for the update. If you haven’t already done so, you can also set automatic updates for your desktop client.
Regular Sign On: To increase security and improve metrics around account usage, Carleton University Zoom users will now be regularly required to sign into their Zoom account before they can join or host a meeting. Please give yourself a few minutes in advance of meetings to prevent disruption while you sign into your account. The steps to access Carleton Zoom accounts can be found on our Single Sign On support page.
Auto-start and Visually Modify Captions: Zoom has improved the accessibility around their captions! Meeting participants and webinar attendees can now select, through the Zoom Desktop Client accessibility settings, to have automated captioning automatically appear. Users can also customize the width of captions in a meeting or webinar to suit their needs.
Screen-sharing Layouts for Immersive View: When using an immersive view and a participant begins sharing their screen, the immersive view will shift to provide space for the shared content to be viewed in a modified layout. Previously, starting a screen share caused the immersive view to be stopped for all. This feature is only supported for up to 25 participants.
Additional Gallery View Sorting Options: Hosts can now sort the order of participant video tiles in Gallery view, choosing from options including Sort by First Name (ascending and descending), Last Name (ascending and descending), and Meeting Entry Time (ascending and descending).
New Meeting Chat Experience: Users can now enable the new meeting chat experience in their individual settings. This experience allows meeting participants to use threaded replies, text formatting, quoting, and in-line image preview. Users can also decide modify this feature to include allowing participants to delete messages in meeting chat, allow participants to send screenshots in the meeting chat, and react to meeting chat messages using emojis.
New Join Flow: The two meeting wait steps, join-before-host and waiting room, have been merged into one newly designed and improved waiting room experience. The button design for self-preview has changed. (This button is used to turn the video camera and mic on and off.) Hosts can now upload a short video to play to their meeting participants while they wait to be admitted to the meeting or webinar.
Sign Language Interpretation: Zoom now supports Sign Language Interpretation in meetings and webinars! Up to 20 participants may be assigned as interpreters, and attendees can toggle the view on and off, as well as move the interpretation video box around their screen as needed. The Interpreters appear as a separate video feed in Zoom cloud recordings, increasing the accessibility of online meetings. NOTE: this feature does not provide the sign language interpreters. An interpreter must be invited by the Host. This feature cannot be used in a Personal Meeting ID, must be enabled before the meeting, and the Host must be joining from an up-to-date version of the Zoom Desktop Application, not the web browser or a mobile app.
Meeting Q&A – Hosts can now enable the Q&A feature in their Zoom meetings, a feature that was previously only available in Webinars. The Q&A feature provides easier navigation of questions as it is separate from the in-meeting chat. Questions can be upvoted by participants, putting the most relevant questions at the top. Hosts can allow users to ask anonymously, answer in writing, and remove irrelevant or inappropriate questions.
Slide Control – Presenters can now give the ability to other participants in a Zoom meeting to control the progression of the slides in a PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides presentation. This provides smoother flow when multiple presenters are presenting from the same document.
100 Breakout rooms – Zoom meetings now support up to 100 breakout rooms, regardless of the participant limit in the meeting. The standard participant limit for Carleton University Zoom meetings is 300. This increase provides improved communication and collaboration in breakout rooms, as smaller groups promote better discussion.
Breakout Rooms from Poll Results – Hosts can split participants into Breakout Rooms based on the way they answer a poll. Hosts can still set a participant limit for each room, and manage the participants after launching the Breakout Rooms. This allows Instructors to better manage their students based on the content of the lesson.
Waiting room video – Hosts can now customize the Waiting Room to include short videos. The video must be in MP4, MOV, or M4V format, and cannot exceed 30 MB. Videos can include sound, but are muted by default.
Zoom updates its platform on a near weekly basis. You can find the Zoom Release Notes on the Zoom Support Site. Note that the complete list of release notes will include Zoom products that Carleton has not licensed.
Below we’ve summarized the highest priority changes Carleton users will notice in Zoom from September 2022 to January 2023.
For a complete list of changes specific to Carleton users, please submit a request to tlssupport.carleton.ca.
New minimum enforced version: On Jan. 4, all Carleton University Zoom users will be required to upgrade to the newest version of the Zoom desktop client and mobile app. These minimum version updates ensure that you receive the newest features, as well as any privacy and security enhancements.
The first time you open Zoom after Jan. 4, you will be prompted to make the update. Please log in a few minutes in advance of your meetings to allow time for the update. If you haven’t already done so, you can also set automatic updates for your desktop client to avoid manual updates in the future.
Chromebook users migrated to progressive web app: On Jan. 4, all Carleton University Zoom users that operate Zoom within the ChromeOS app with be migrated to the Zoom Progressive Web App (PWA). There is no action required on the users part.
Q&A: (Coming Soon!) The ever popular Question & Answer tool in Zoom Webinars is now available in Zoom Meetings. Hosts can enable this feature in their meetings and control whether the responses are anonymous or not. Questions can also be set to allow voting by participants, with the most highly voted questions displayed prominently and less popular questions moved to the bottom of the list. Participants can also be given the ability to comment on questions. This feature helps the host manage questions that used to appear in the in-meeting chat. Questions can also be answered privately using the Type Answer option. Upon completion of the meeting, a Q&A report will be generated by Zoom for hosts to reference.
Creation and editing of polls directly in a meeting: Previously, hosts had to create and edit basic and advanced polls in the web portal. Now, hosts can create polls directly from within the meeting. For MacOS users, this feature requires macOS version 10.12 or higher.
Dimmed video if flashing images or patterns are detected: Participants that are sensitive to visual triggers can now enable a setting in their Zoom client settings under Accessibility that will dim the incoming Zoom video when such triggers are detected. See below for a screen shot of the Dim Screen Share Video setting.
If you have any questions about these updates or need support, please reach out through the TLS Support Portal.
Hours of Operation: 8:30 am – 4:30 pm, Monday-Friday (excluding university holidays)
Student Technical Support
Student support for educational technology applications is provided by the ITS service desk. Student-specific Zoom resources can also be found on the Carleton Online website.
If you have any questions about the policies that govern Zoom, or about user conduct concerns such as Zoombombing, please email TLS at: tlssupport@cunet.carleton.ca
Local recordings are stored internally to your computer’s hard drive space, whereas cloud recordings are stored externally. Recordings stored within the Zoom cloud are automatically deleted after 120 days, however these recordings are automatically uploaded to the host’s Mediaspace account. Mediaspace recordings can be embedded into a course page in Brightspace and are deleted 4 years after their last view.
We recommend recording to the cloud to prevent loss of content, and ease sharing recordings with others.
Please reference the following support pages for more information:
In order to enhance security in Zoom and prevent Zoombombing, some Zoom users enable a registration list. When a registration list is used, Zoom is able to restrict meeting access to anyone whose email is not on the list. Participants attempting to join the session without first logging into a Zoom account will be unable to access the session.
To assist with joining Zoom meetings, login to your Zoom account using your MC1 credentials with your @cunet or @cmail email address.
Yes, you are able to sign in early or stay late in a scheduled Zoom meeting. Zoom meetings do not open and close at the start and end dates/times. The indicated dates and times are for scheduling purposes and to help with retrieving meeting information.