Support for administrative meetings
For administrative web conferencing support, please contact the Office of Information Technology.
Zoom web conferencing
The Zoom web conferencing tool is available for the campus. The University of Nevada, Reno licenses the Zoom for Education plan for all faculty, staff, and students.
This plan allows for unlimited duration meetings, meeting capacity of 300, and cloud video storage for recorded meetings.
Please visit the University of Nevada, Reno Zoom web portal to provision your account.
Zoom sign in instructions
Step 1: In the Zoom application, click/tap on the Sign In button.
Step 2: Click on the SSO button.
Step 3: If prompted, enter 'unr' in the domain field.
Step 4: Enter your NetID and password.
Zoom for students
Information and guidance for students attending class sessions through Zoom can be found in the student guide for Zoom.
Removing a participant and securing your Zoom sessions
Learn how to remove a disruptive participant from your Zoom sessions, and how to set up a Zoom session to be more secure against disruption and attack.
Zoom information for instructors
Zoom is a web conferencing tool that can be used for live class sessions, presentations by guest lecturers, instructor office hours, or interactions between students and peers. Zoom allows you to conduct class or hold meetings in a live online format using a web camera and microphone while sharing the contents of your screen. It features the ability to share your screen, a chat function, a virtual whiteboard, breakout rooms for smaller discussions, and allows you to record your sessions.
Zoom is accessed via the web portal, as a standalone application on your desktop or phone, or in WebCampus. With the WebCampus integration, you can add the Zoom link to your course menus for easy deployment in your courses.
Please visit best practices for teaching live with Zoom for information on instructional strategies.
Getting started on Windows and Mac (external link to Zoom site)
Securing your Zoom sessions against Zoombombing
With the increased reliance on web conferencing for instruction, sound security practices need to be emphasized to minimize disruption and exposure to threats. A recent trend of Zoombombing, wherein internet trolls (often with no affiliation to the class or University) gain access to unsecured Zoom meetings can be combated by:
- Utilizing the waiting room feature in Zoom to screen participants of your meeting who have not signed into to the University of Nevada, Reno Zoom portal.
- Setting a password for your meetings.
- Enabling the “Only authenticated users can join” option for your meetings.
- Ensuring that you Zoom meeting links are never posted to any public facing website.
For more best practices on securing your Zoom sessions, see our page on preventing Zoombombing.
Setting up, launching Zoom and troubleshooting issues
The first time you use Zoom, please visit the University's Zoom Video Conferencing Portal and sign in there. This will trigger the account creation, and allow Zoom to be accessed from WebCampus.
Zoom can be added to your WebCampus course menu for convenient scheduling from within the course. Students can access your scheduled meetings directly from this menu item. To integrate Zoom with your WebCampus course follow the steps below:
- Click on the Settings option at the bottom of your course menu.
- Click on the Navigation tab.
- Scroll down and locate the Zoom item under the category titled “Drag items here to hide them from students”.
- Click on the 3-dots to the right of the Zoom item and click on “Enable”.
- Click Save at the bottom of the page.
- Click on Home at the top of your course menu. You should now see a link to Zoom displayed on your course menu.
- From the WebCampus course, click on the Zoom menu item.
- If this is the first time you are clicking on the Zoom link, it may require you to go to your email and click on an authorization link that will have been sent to you. Once you have authorized, you may return to WebCampus and continue with the next steps.
- Click the “Schedule a New Meeting” button towards the top of the screen.
- Fill in all the fields to set up the meeting, taking special note of the following:
- Recurring meeting allows you to schedule Day, Weekly, or Monthly recurring sessions.
- The "Host" radio button toggles the host's web cam to start automatically when the session starts.
- The "Participant" radio button toggles the participants' web cam to start automatically when the session starts.
- Enable join before host allows participants to enter the session before the instructor does.
- Click Save. A confirmation page will appear, with the meeting parameters and a Start button if you wish to enter the meeting now.
- Click on the Zoom menu item to return to your list of upcoming meetings.
- Click the Start link corresponding to the meeting you just scheduled if you wish to enter the meeting now. You may also delete meetings from this list by clicking on the Delete link.
Students may access Zoom sessions using the Zoom course menu link in WebCampus. However, if you choose not to use the Zoom WebCampus integration to create the session, the link to the session can instead be put in a course message, or in a course announcement.
Many issues can be avoided by conducting a test session or dry-run before a critical web conference in Zoom. In instructional applications, it is recommended that a test session be put on the course schedule well in advance of any required Zoom meeting.
Contact the Office of Digital Learning if an error relating to authentication or authorization appears when you click the ZOOM menu item. When Zoom launches, it attempts to determine if your account in WebCampus is associated with a valid Zoom login. Errors similar to the one pictured below may indicates that either you do not have a Zoom account, or that your email address in WebCampus differs from the one used on your Zoom account:
Problems with audio and microphones
The Zoom Help Center offers a comprehensive tutorial for connecting to Zoom audio on a wide array of different devices: How do I Join or Test My Computer Audio? (external link to Zoom site)
If you are not able to hear the audio in a Zoom session, you may need to check your audio hardware and settings on your computer.
Check to make sure your headphones are plugged into your computer. If your headphones are USB headphones and your computer has multiple USB ports, try disconnecting from one port and connecting to a different port. If after reconnecting your headphones an installation process begins, make sure to follow through with all steps of the installation process.
On a windows device, ensure the default audio device is set to your headphones rather then your built in speakers. Right-click on the sound icon in the taskbar and select "Playback Devices." Right-click in an empty area of the list of devices that show up, and select "Show Disconnected Devices" as well as "Show Disabled Devices." Find your headphones from the list of devices and right-click on them. Click "Set as Default Device."
How do I . . .
To enable live-captions in your meetings:
Step 1: Click on the Show Captions button from the Zoom meeting controls in the lower portion of the Zoom interface.
Note: If you do not see the Show Captions button, it is possible that your Zoom window is reduced in size and you will find the same link under the More button.
Step 2: Choose the language you wish the captions to appear in. Zoom supports multiple languages and will also translate automatically if the language chosen differs from what is spoken in the meeting.
Zoom meetings can be secured to prevent malicious disruptions and 'Zoombombing' attempts. See the how to prevent Zoombombing page for more information.
Zoom keeps an attendance record for meetings. To access the record of who attended a Zoom session, please make sure the meeting has ended and follow the instructions below:
- Sign into the University's Zoom portal
- On the left side of the screen, under ‘Personal’, click on Reports.
- Click on Usage.
- Find the meeting that you wish to take attendance for and click on the number that is listed in the ‘Participants’ column.
- You may view the attendance information online, or export the data to an Excel spreadsheet.
To record your Zoom session follow the instructions below:
- Start your Zoom session and proceed to the point at which you want to start the recording.
- Click on the ‘Record’ button at the bottom of the screen.
- Choose from one of the following options:
- Record to the cloud will store the recording on web. The link to the recording will automatically be available to students if you launched the meeting from WebCampus, and will be available for you to post as a link if you launched the meeting from the Zoom website. Cloud recordings automatically generate closed captions*. This method is preferred for recording live class sessions, as it allows students to easily review the lecture at a later time. Allow up to a day for the recordings to become available.
- Record on this computer saves the recording to your local hard drive as an .mp4 file, and an audio only .mp3 file. The recording will be found on your computer under /documents/zoom in a folder named with the timestamp and name of the recording. Recording locally to the computer will not generate closed captions. The local recording method is preferred for creating pre-recorded lectures, as the locally stored file may be edited, and for meetings in which the recorded information may be sensitive and inappropriate to store on the cloud.
- You may pause the recording by clicking on the pause button, or stop the recording by clicking on the stop button.
- When the meeting ends, the recording will be processed, either to the cloud, or to your /documents/zoom folder if you chose to record locally. If you had not previously stopped the recording, the recording will stop when the meeting ends.
Depending on how you recorded your Zoom session, you can make the recording available to students as follows:
Zoom session launched in WebCampus and recorded to the cloud
Direct students to click on the Zoom item on your WebCampus course menu. Recordings will be found under the ‘Cloud Recordings’ tab once they have processed. Allow for up to a day for recordings to process before they appear.
Zoom sessions launched outside of WebCampus and recorded to the cloud
- Sign into the University's Zoom portal.
- Click on the ‘Recordings’ link on the left side of the screen.
- Locate the recording and click on the Share button to the right of the recording.
- Leave the ‘Publicly’ option checked, and copy the link text shown in the box.
- You can paste the link text into a WebCampus announcement, or email, or send it to students individually.
Zoom sessions recorded locally
Locally recorded Zoom sessions can be uploaded to the Kaltura video hosting platform. See Using Kaltura to deploy multimedia content in WebCampus for more information.
To designate a co-host for your meeting, follow the steps below:
Add a co-host before the meeting starts
A co-host can be added to your meeting before it starts as long as they have activated their Zoom account at the University of Nevada, Reno. Please ask that they sign in to the University's Zoom portal to activate their account. People who do not have an affiliation with the University will need to be added as a co-host after the meeting begins.
- Schedule a new Zoom meeting either at the Zoom website, or from the Zoom menu item in WebCampus.
- Designate all the parameters of your meeting as usual.
- At the bottom of the meeting settings, enter the email address of the co-hosts which you want to add, separated by a comma. You must use the email address that is associated with the co-hosts Zoom account.
- Save your Zoom meeting.
When the co-host enters the meeting, they will be recognized as the co-host.
Add a co-host after the meeting starts
Any participant in your Zoom meeting can be made a co-host during the meeting. This includes participants who are not affiliated with the University.
- From within the Zoom meeting, open the Manage Participants panel from the options at the bottom of the meeting window.
- Mouse-over the participant you wish to make a co-host and click on ‘More’.
- Click on ‘Make co-host’.
Be careful not to click on ‘Make host’, as that will take the hosting ability away from you and you will not be able to get it back without asking the new host to grant it to you.
By default, students may present in your Zoom session by clicking on the Share Screen button. If someone else is sharing at the time, they will need to have stopped sharing before the student may share their screen. As the host, you may share your screen at any time, regardless of whether a student has already initiated a screen share.
To invite a guest speaker, send the URL of your Zoom meeting via email to the guest. After they join your session, you may assign them as a co-host as follows:
- From within the Zoom meeting, open the Manage Participants panel from the options at the bottom of the meeting window.
- Mouse-over the participant you wish to make a co-host and click on ‘More’.
- Click on ‘Make co-host’.
Zoom can utilize the camera on your iPhone or iPad to act as a simple document camera. See our guide on how to make an improvised document camera for more information.