Zoom: Using Zoom Meeting like a Webinar

This article will cover some of the best practices for managing attendees in your meeting.

Instructions:

Your standard Zoom meeting license can be used like a webinar when certain settings are used appropriately and with up to 300 attendees.  Unless your meeting is expected to have more than 300, you can use your standard Zoom meeting license.

You must change some of your personal settings within Zoom to have the appropriate default options in place to limit what the meeting participants can do.  You must configure these settings before you schedule and host the meeting.  Note that these changes will apply to all of the meetings that you host, but some can be overridden either when scheduling the meeting or while actually running the meeting you need to have more flexibility and features enabled for your participants.

Adjusting your Settings

1. Login by selecting Sign In / My Account in the upper right
2. From the left side menu, select Settings

3. Configure items as listed below:

4. Participants video = Off
5. Set Audio Type to both Telephone and Computer Audio
6. Join before host = Off
7. Set Mute participants upon entry = On
8. Chat should be set to be On, but "Prevent participants from saving chat" should be checked to limit attendees from saving the chat.  Be sure to click Save.
9. Private chat is turned Off
10. Screen sharing set to Host Only.  Be sure to click Save.
11. Nonverbal feedback = On.  This allows the host can use this to ask closed-ended questions and attendees can reply using Nonverbal feedback icons in the participant panel.
12. Allow removed participants to rejoin = Off
13. Once these settings are configured, then proceed with scheduling and holding your meeting.

Scheduling a Meeting

You can now create your meeting based the default settings that you had already configured.

1. From the My Account page or Settings Page select Meetings.
2. Use the the blue icon to Schedule a New Meeting.
3. Consider adding an Alternative Host to the meeting.  An Alternative Host can also start the meeting and will have Co-host rights.  This person can help monitor chat and control attendees while the host presents.

Running the Meeting

Your participants will all start muted, but can unmute themselves and talk.  To prevent this, you must take action when you start the meeting.

1. Open the participants list.
2. Click the Mute All button.  In a pop-up, there will be an option of "Allow participants to unmute themselves".  Uncheck this item.

Your participants now can only listen.  If you wish to allow an individual to use audio or video, you or the co-host can enable that on a person by person basis in the participant list.

To support your participants and get questions or feedback, encourage them to use the Chat feature and mention to attendees how to use the Nonverbal Feedback icons.

Outcome:

User will be able to use the standard Zoom meeting to function in much the same ways as Zoom's webinar feature.

Need additional help?

If you have more questions about Zoom, please fill out the Zoom Web Conferencing help form, or contact the Technology Help Desk on your local campus.