We need your help to plan for fall. For your students who will be connecting synchronously or asynchronously to your classroom, we have offered you access to two lecture capture and meeting platforms, Google Meet and Zoom. Here are some important details about choosing which platform you will use and some things to consider as you engage in what many of you will be a different way of delivering your courses.
At the end of this post, I will ask you to fill out a survey to let us know which platform we will source for you. If nothing else, please skip over my wordy post and take the survey at the end.
Google Meet
Google Meet is the synchronous meeting platform that is provided as part of our being a GSuite school. It is directly integrated into our Calendaring system and Google Drive. This means that you can create a calendar invitation that repeats weekly at your scheduled meeting times and use the "Add Google Meet video conferencing" button to set up a virtual meeting room.
If you record your meetings, which we recommend that you do, those meetings will automatically be recorded AND SHARED with any invitees for the meeting. The recording will be labeled with the name of what you called your meeting as well as a timestamp. All "Guests" (your students) will be sent an email a couple hours after the recording is stopped letting them know they can access the recording.
Google is also promising a slew of new features to Meet. These include:
- tighter jamboard integration (more on that later),
- attendance tracking,
- breakout rooms,
- knocking features to limit "zoom bombing",
- a Q&A function, and
- hand raising.
Zoom
Zoom is a more mature product. There is a reason that many people call tissues 'Kleenexes' and electronic interactive whiteboards [IWBs] 'Smartboards'. People often call online meetings 'Zoom meetings.' These are cases where a product or brand has become synonymous to the function it fulfills. I also used the term 'zoom bombing' earlier in this post. 'Zoom bombing' is when a bunch of random people (not invited) jump into an online meeting and disrupt it.
Zoom has most of the features that Google meet is promising in its fall release already nicely integrated and I think I can confidently say its video compression and transmission quality is at least slightly better than what Google Meet's current capabilities. Zoom is also only available at additional cost.
Providing a consistent UX [user experience] to our students
Whichever platform you choose (you will be able to choose either Meet or Zoom), it is VERY important that you deliver access to your synchronous meetings in manner consistent with the other classes that a student is taking. This is not the time "to go and do your own thing" that is completely different from other faculty. I cannot emphasize enough the need to bring uniformity to as many factors as possible for our students in a time when it seems that everything has been upended and there is no shoreline in sight.
I cannot emphasize enough the need to bring uniformity to as many factors as possible for our students in a time when it seems that everything has been upended and there is no shoreline in sight.
Here are some ways that we - as the body of educators [and believers] at Malone University - can deliver a consistent and welcoming student experience through the technologies available at the University:
- Use of Moodle for delivering course content (not using courses drive or Google Classroom or some alternate LMS)
- Use of Moodle for taking attendance its gradebook for delivering grades (not a Google Spreadsheet)
- Leverage the campus calendar AND Moodle to give the student links to class meetings and scheduling of office hours
- Cross-post any course announcements in Moodle; better yet do ALL course communications via Moodle.
One example of how the University is doing this for faculty is the approach we are taking with our classrooms. For the Hyflex classrooms, a key design decision is "outrageous consistency". We want you to be able to walk into any Hyflex room on campus and have a similar -let's say outrageously consistent - experience.
Using the Campus Calendar
I plan to dedicate an entire post specifically to the use of the campus calendar in the near future, but the short version is that its use will allow for a consistent UX for our students, a way that students can know when they need to be in class, and facilitate connection information and the sharing of other content to the students. We are implementing meeting and common space calendaring across campus in addition to your using the calendar to schedule your course times.
Whether you use Google OR Zoom, please do the following items in our campus Google calendar.
- Post all Course Meetings in Google Calendar. If using Google Meet, use the one click button to add your meeting invite to the event. If using Zoom, be sure to copy and paste the Zoom room meeting connection information into the Event(s).
- Invite all of your students to the event(s).
- Attach files relevant to each meeting using the paperclip.
- Post other relevant information into the event (location, description, etc.)
You should also make the final step of copy or crossposting the meeting information into Moodle. One method of doing this is to copy a link to the calendar event into Moodle.
- Click "More actions"
- Click "Publish Event" to publish the whole series (repeating/recurring events) OR click "Publish this instance of the event" to get a link to the specific meeting.
- Copy the link to the event and paste/post that link into Moodle. This way your students can access the meeting either through the Moodle course page OR their calendar!
We need your help! Choose this day which platform you shall use!
Google Meet: Easier to record and share meetings with no additional cost to Malone and our students
Zoom: More mature conferencing product with existing breakout room features and better overall feature set.
Please fill out this survey to let us know. If you do NOT fill out the survey, you will be opted into Google Meet. You must be signed in with your malone.edu account to answer the survey.
Thank you!
Adam Klemann
** M. Adam Klemann, M.S. **
** Chief Information Officer **
** Information Technologies **
** Division of Finance & Business Affairs - Malone University **
** email: aklemann@malone.edu **
** help desk: 330.471.8428 - my phone: 330.471.8308 **
** Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/adamklemann **
** Follow Malone Information Technologies on Twitter at http://twitter.com/maloneit **
Serving Malone students, faculty, and staff with effectiveness, efficiency, & excellence.
Explore Our Pendle Hill Pledge | Take a virtual tour of our campus!
** M. Adam Klemann, M.S. **
** Chief Information Officer **
** Information Technologies **
** Division of Finance & Business Affairs - Malone University **
** email: aklemann@malone.edu **
** help desk: 330.471.8428 - my phone: 330.471.8308 **
** Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/adamklemann **
** Follow Malone Information Technologies on Twitter at http://twitter.com/maloneit **
Serving Malone students, faculty, and staff with effectiveness, efficiency, & excellence.
Explore Our Pendle Hill Pledge | Take a virtual tour of our campus!
