Zoom Meeting: Time Zone Issues and Students Are Able To Edit My Times

[BryanBuckley]

I am using the Zoom Meetings option on Canvas to manage my office hours. There are two distinct problems I am running into:

1) Some students sign up for a time and are sent an email with the wrong time zone. We are in Central Time and they receive an email giving the time in Pacific Time. I cannot figure out what setting creates this issue. The times are all automatically scheduled in Zoom for me and they do not have this issue. 

2) Some students go to the Appointments page to book a time and see a screen that is the same as what I see. They seem to have permission to edit my Appointments. But this also means that they can't book an appointment just like I would be unable to book an appointment with myself.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

@BryanBuckley ...

I know that there are time zone settings in both Canvas and within the Zoom integration with Canvas.  For students, they can configure their time zone settings for the Canvas LMS by looking at this Guide:

• How do I set a time zone in my user account as a student?

For instructors, there are two areas where time zones can be set in the Canvas LMS:

• How do I set a time zone for a course?
• How do I set a time zone in my user account as an instructor?

This means that if your campus was located in the Central time zone, you could set it to that, and if you taught the course from your home on the East Coast, you could set your user account time zone setting to that time zone...and Canvas would figure all that out.

Now, for the time zone settings in the Zoom interface...  I'm assuming that you are clicking on some sort of Zoom button on the left-hand side course navigation within your Canvas course.  (Students would do the same thing.)  When the Zoom interface appears, right underneath the Zoom logo it says, "Your current Tiem Zone and Language are {time zone, language}" with a pencil icon next to it.  Both instructors and students would need to click on the icon to confirm that the time zone setting is correct on that screen, too.  I used to be a Zoom admin at my previous employer, and I forget if there was a setting that carried over the time zone setting from Canvas to Zoom (or vice versa), but I think it's a good idea to double-check this setting just in case.

So, these are the areas you should check as an instructor, and your students should check their own time zone settings as well (you cannot control these for your students).

I hope this will be of some help to you.

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

@BryanBuckley ...

I know that there are time zone settings in both Canvas and within the Zoom integration with Canvas.  For students, they can configure their time zone settings for the Canvas LMS by looking at this Guide:

• How do I set a time zone in my user account as a student?

For instructors, there are two areas where time zones can be set in the Canvas LMS:

• How do I set a time zone for a course?
• How do I set a time zone in my user account as an instructor?

This means that if your campus was located in the Central time zone, you could set it to that, and if you taught the course from your home on the East Coast, you could set your user account time zone setting to that time zone...and Canvas would figure all that out.

Now, for the time zone settings in the Zoom interface...  I'm assuming that you are clicking on some sort of Zoom button on the left-hand side course navigation within your Canvas course.  (Students would do the same thing.)  When the Zoom interface appears, right underneath the Zoom logo it says, "Your current Tiem Zone and Language are {time zone, language}" with a pencil icon next to it.  Both instructors and students would need to click on the icon to confirm that the time zone setting is correct on that screen, too.  I used to be a Zoom admin at my previous employer, and I forget if there was a setting that carried over the time zone setting from Canvas to Zoom (or vice versa), but I think it's a good idea to double-check this setting just in case.

So, these are the areas you should check as an instructor, and your students should check their own time zone settings as well (you cannot control these for your students).

I hope this will be of some help to you.

[BryanBuckley]

I looked at all three of the time zone settings you mentioned and all of my settings appear to be Central Time zone.

It must be that students have time zone set to Pacific, but I cannot figure out why that would be. 

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

@BryanBuckley ...

I'm not too sure why that would be, either.  It may be that the Pacific time zone is the "default" time zone.  It's been at least a year-and-a-half since my last Canvas admin role where I was a Zoom admin, so I don't recall the exact screens I had access to.  I'm wondering if there was an overall time zone that we had configured for our College.  If so, that time zone would be the "default", and students could change it on their own if they lived in a different time zone.  That's just my educated guess.  I found this support page on Zoom's website for you...in case it helps:

Changing time zone settings - Zoom Support

I'd suggest letting your students know to check their Canvas and Zoom time zone settings.  Good luck!