Skip to Main Content
Brandeis Moodle Guides

Moodle Resources for Faculty

Help is Just a Click Away

Library staff is available to support faculty with pedagogical approaches for using academic technologies and course design. Send us an email with your questions.

Send an email

Overview

Zoom goes above and beyond video conferencing by engaging participants with various tools for in-person and hybrid teaching. The host of a Zoom meeting can share their screen, write on a digital whiteboard, send participants into breakout rooms, and customize polling questions. Zoom is a great choice for recording lectures and presentations. Participants can also share their screens to allow for virtual synchronous presentations with the correct permissions in place. The Brandeis Zoom account now has access to Live Transcription, to support the needs of all community members who benefit from subtitles during live meetings. 

On this page, you will find instructions for creating a Zoom meeting and sharing the link on your Moodle course page for students to easily find it. You will also find instructions on how to use Zoom hybrid teaching, with both virtual and in-person students.  In Resources, you will find detailed documentation on a variety of features, including teaching best practices with Zoom, scheduling reoccurring meetings, automatically recording meetings to the Cloud, setting up breakout rooms, and creating poll questions. 

IMPORTANT: Zoom recordings will only remain saved on the Brandeis server for 180 days. If you want to share your Zoom recordings for a longer period of time, you can use Echo360. 

Create a Zoom Meeting

 One week before the course starts

After you receive the course schedule, create a recurring Zoom meeting room for all sessions. Brandeis uses Zoom as its main video conferencing tool that makes virtual meetings more accessible for students with disabilities and non-native English speakers.

Due to the length of the instructions for creating the meeting and updating Moodle, make sure you click through each of the tabs in this box to cover each step. 

  1. Sign in to the Brandeis Zoom web portal using your UNet credentials..
  2. In the navigation panel, click Meetings.
  3. Click the Schedule a Meeting button.
  4. Enter your course name as the meeting topic. For example: Introduction to International Relations.
  5. Enter the date and start time of the first class of the semester. Set the duration of the class time.
  6. Below the Time Zone option, check the box for the Recurring meeting option.
  7. Select the recurrence settings. Recurrence: Weekly. Repeat every: 1 week. Occurs on: Select each day of the week the class meets. End date: the last class day of the semester. 
    Zoom reoccurring meeting settings
  8. Optional: Select the Security and Video settings that you prefer.
  9. Optional: Add a TA as an alternative host by entering their Brandeis email address. 
  10. Recommended: Enable the Automatically record meeting option to always have the entire session recorded. You can trim the recording before sharing it with students.
  11. Click the blue Save button.
  12. On the next screen select the link to copy the URL of the Zoom meeting.

Zoom settings with an arrow indicating to the viewer to select the link to copy the url of the meeting  

How to Add a URL Link

Add the Zoom link to your Moodle Course by using the URL Tool

  1. Open the course and find the section where you would like to add a URL link. 
  2. Select the + sign to add a new Activity or Resource. 
Add Activity Settings in Moodle
Select the + to add a new activity in Moodle
  1. Select URL from the Activity Chooser. 
Select an activity settings in Moodle
Select the URL activity from the menu.
  1. On the next screen enter a descriptive name for the link.  Then enter the URL to the Zoom meeting that you copied from Zoom.  We recommend adjusting the Appearance Setting to New Window. 
URL Tool Settings in Moodle
Enter the URL for the Zoom meeting.
  1. Optional: If you have enabled activity and course completion settings, you can enable activity completion to verify that students are visiting the URL link.
URL Tool Settings
  1. Select Save and Return to Course. 
URL view on the course page
Select Save and Return to course.

Double check that your Brandeis Zoom account is properly configured for cloud recording and automatic transcripts before your first meeting.

  1. Sign in to the Brandeis Zoom web portal using your UNet credentials.
  2. In the navigation panel, click Settings.
  3. Navigate to the Recording tab and verify that the Cloud recording setting is enabled. If the setting is disabled, click the toggle to enable it.
  4. Under Advanced cloud recording settings, verify that the box next to Audio transcript is checked/enabled.
  5. Under Allow cloud recording sharing, verify that the setting is enabled. If the setting is disabled, click the toggle to enable it.
  6. Optional: You may choose to enable Automatic recording by clicking the toggle to enable it. You can also enable this for the recurring course meeting rather than at the account level.

Hybrid Teaching with Zoom

Live Transcription

The Brandeis Zoom account now has live captions and transcription! Hosts should enable this in every meeting so participants can turn subtitles on if they choose. 

To enable Zoom Live Transcription: 

  1. Click Live Transcript in the Zoom meeting controls (toolbar at bottom of screen).
  2. When the Live Transcription menu opens, click Enable Auto-Transcription.
  3. To turn off Live Transcription, click Disable Auto-Transcription from the Live Transcript menu.

IMPORTANT: If the meeting is being recorded, and you have enabled Live Transcript, you will receive a copy of the transcript in the same location as your recorded meeting.

External Resources