We provide the information and guidelines below to assist TTU students, faculty, and staff to successfully participate in online meetings using Collaborate, Skype, Teams, or Zoom.
Best Practices for Scheduling Online Meetings and Courses
Many of the options/settings for the online meeting experience are established when the meeting is being scheduled. It is very important that these settings are correct.
- Waiting Rooms: When participants are known, trusted, and authenticated, waiting rooms are generally not necessary, example: internal departmental meetings. However, use of waiting rooms is recommended for large meetings when participants include representatives from outside entities, such as a guest lecture or a collaborative research meeting with other institutions. If a waiting room is being used, the meeting host should begin admitting participants a few minutes early and pay close attention to latecomers. Meetings that are in progress can also be locked to prevent additional attendees from joining or rejoining.
- Recurring Meeting Invitations: If the host sends a meeting cancellation, recipients should remove it from their calendars. When calendar invitations are updated, always send the update to all participants so that everyone joins the same online meeting. It is also a good idea to periodically end a recurring series and begin a new series with all participants. For example, schedule monthly recurring meetings on an annual basis.
- For those platforms that have a designated host, designate at least one or two additional co-hosts on every meeting who can admit participants, enable screen sharing, monitor chats, etc. This is particularly important in Zoom and Collaborate meetings. Ensure that the hosts are familiar with these collaboration tool features. For more information, please see the Additional Help and Support section below.
- While always joining meetings on time, consider starting online meetings a few minutes after the scheduled start time and ending meetings promptly a few minutes before the scheduled end time to allow participants to transition between back-to-back online meetings.
Best Practices for Secure Online Meetings and Course Sessions
When meeting online, be sure to practice safe computing and avoid unwanted guests (Zoombombing). General tips for hosting secure online meetings:
- Check for conferencing app updates at least once a month. When possible, configure applications for automatic updates and install updates upon notice.
- Do not publicly post meeting links to social media unless you intend to invite everyone who views your social media feeds.
- Use unique meeting identifiers so that your meeting is only available to those with that identifier.
- Use a waiting room to manage participants joining prior to the host or rejoining after leaving the meeting.
- Consider managing disruptions and unexpected participants by locking meetings from late or returning participants after all expected participants have joined.
- Hosts should ask unknown or unidentified participants to identify themselves or should remove them (example: dialed in participants).
- Limit who can join meetings as a presenter; enable only specific individuals to help co-host the meeting.
- Disable file sharing, if not needed.
- Mute participants who do not need to speak.
Best Practices for Participating in Online Meetings and Courses
- Make sure you are signed into your conferencing app (Zoom, Teams, etc.) before joining a meeting.
- Arrive to meetings early (especially in hybrid meetings in conference rooms and classrooms) in case there are technical difficulties.
- Remember to mute and unmute yourself as appropriate.
- Ensure that you have a quality Internet connection.
- In general, most TTU resources, such as email, Blackboard Collaborate, Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom, do not need a large amount of bandwidth.
- Remember that other activities, such as streaming audio and video, may impact your meeting experience.
- When possible, use audio for online activities that do not require video. Note that most online meeting tools will automatically prioritize audio over video if sufficient bandwidth is unavailable.
- eLearning & Academic Partnerships offers a helpful video with great strategies for effective participation in online environments:
- Treat your online course and work as if it were face-to-face.
- Use a schedule.
- Create a dedicated physical and virtual learning/working space.
- Just as you would in a traditional environment, focus your attention and communicate effectively.
Additional Help and Support
If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact your department’s local IT support staff or IT Help Central at (806) 742-4357 (HELP) or
ithelpcentral@ttu.edu.