by Distance Learning

Web conferencing - Zoom

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The University provides web conferencing services via Zoom across campuses and wherever you or your students may happen to be.

Zoom is a collaborative software product that enables videoconferencing via the web. Zoom is available for use by distance teachers and supported by the University’s ITSS eConferencing team.

Using Zoom, you and your students can see and talk with each other, share your screens and show presentations to each other, work in small groups in break-out rooms, use text chat, a whiteboard and polls. And, you can record your sessions. There is also an instant messaging system via the desktop or mobile application.

Students can attend “classes” from work or home if they have access to a reasonably modern computer, a headset and webcam, or just a mobile device and headphones, as well as a good quality broadband connection.

Web conferencing:

  • offers immediacy and a way of building social presence within the class;
  • provides a way to undertake live demonstrations; and
  • can enhance collaborative activities across sites.

The potential disadvantage with any videoconferencing is that it can suffer from lecturers sometimes teaching with the same methods in the “virtual” classroom as they do in their face-to-face classroom. Courses should be designed to exploit the advantages of videoconferencing in combination with the use of other technologies.

Information about Zoom, including how to get started can be found here.

Log in and automatically create your account here.

If you wish to discuss in more detail how Zoom could work for you, please contact:

ITSS eConferencing on:

Tel 64 3 479 8997 or 64 3 479 8440
Email econferencing@otago.ac.nz
Web https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/zoom/