How to Secure Your Zoom Sessions from Intrusive Activity
See details on four strategies:
For more resources see Zoom's Message to Our Users dated April 1, 2020
Zoom
recently updated (March 26, 2020) the default screen-sharing settings for education users. Sharing privileges are now set to
Host Only, so faculty by default are the only ones who can share content in class. This setting can be adjusted during the meeting:
Share or restrict Screen Sharing
You can Lock Meeting during a session. During the session select Managing Participants. Click on More in the lower right corner:
Select Lock Meeting from the dropdown menu:
This means no new participants can enter the session. You can return to the dropdown menu to unlock the meeting during the session.
You can limit Zoom Chat to conversation with the Host only, meaning students will not be able to chat to everyone in the session or privately to another participant. Each student will be able to chat only to the Host. This setting can be adjusted during a Zoom session. In the Chat window, click on the ellipsis located in the lower right corner. Select Host only in the dropdown menu:
Activate Waiting Room to allow the faculty to approve everyone who enters the session:
Select Settings in the navigation bar on the left side of the screen
Search for the setting Waiting Room [located in the section In Meeting (Advanced)]. Click to turn on this setting:
When you schedule a meeting you will see the Waiting Room option in the Advanced settings:
Start the session, view Managing Participants to review everyone attempting to enter the session, and manually allow them to enter.
The video, How to Use Waiting Room to Manage Office Hours and Drop-In Visitor Times (4:28 minutes), demonstrates an efficient way to host a block of individual sessions, such as faculty office hours.