Zoom and Sections

[susan_eckerle]

Zoom and Groups.  I have 3 sections under 1 course.  Each of these sections are a separate and totally different class.  I would like to meet with each section through Zoom.  However if I click on 1 section, then the zoom meeting is schedule for the other 2 sections and I don'w want that.  I want 3 separate Zoom sessions.

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hello there,  @susan_eckerle ...

I'm assuming that your school has integrated Zoom into your school's Canvas courses.  Canvas is a Learning Management System, and Zoom is a video conferencing application...two completely different kinds of software.  Even though Zoom may be integrated into your Canvas course(s), it does not know what a "section" is as defined by Instructure (the people that make Canvas).  So, the best thing I can recommend is that you set up different Zoom meetings for each of your sections ... and maybe name those Zoom sessions based on the sections in your course.  You could even password protect each of the Zoom meetings and only give the password to the appropriate people in each of those sections...so they aren't entering the meetings by accident.

Do you think this solution would work for your needs?

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hello there,  @susan_eckerle ...

I'm assuming that your school has integrated Zoom into your school's Canvas courses.  Canvas is a Learning Management System, and Zoom is a video conferencing application...two completely different kinds of software.  Even though Zoom may be integrated into your Canvas course(s), it does not know what a "section" is as defined by Instructure (the people that make Canvas).  So, the best thing I can recommend is that you set up different Zoom meetings for each of your sections ... and maybe name those Zoom sessions based on the sections in your course.  You could even password protect each of the Zoom meetings and only give the password to the appropriate people in each of those sections...so they aren't entering the meetings by accident.

Do you think this solution would work for your needs?

[susan_eckerle]

Hi,

Thank you and I hope your family and you are safe. Yes, the two platforms are integrated and I completely accept that they were never designed to work well together. With that said, here we are.

If I set up a Zoom meeting by clickinig on one of my Canvas sections, Canvas assigns the same Zoom meeting to all 3 sections. This is a Canvas issue, not a Zoom.

I went another route and made it work.

Thank you for your time and effort.

Take care,

Susan

Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi  @susan_eckerle ...

If I set up a Zoom meeting by clickinig on one of my Canvas sections, Canvas assigns the same Zoom meeting to all 3 sections.  This is a Canvas issue, not a Zoom

I understand what you are saying...but I'm not sure I totally agree.  Full disclosure, I am not a programmer, so my interpretation of how the Zoom/Canvas integration works could be completely off here.  My thought, though, is that there would have to be some kind of back-end code to allow Canvas to "talk" with Zoom to let Zoom know that there are sections in a Canvas course.  And, since you're really using a portion of Zoom's website to schedule your meetings in Canvas, it doesn't know what a Canvas section is.  While I do agree a feature like that would be nice inside of Zoom, I think you would need to make that suggestion to Zoom and not to Instructure because it is something you'd like to see in Zoom.  I hope this helps, Susan.

[susan_eckerle]

Thank you so much. Hopefully I will get to physically see my kids sooner than later and this will be for naught.

Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10

[jcrowe3717 · Accepted solution]

I disagree that this is a Zoom feature rather than a Canvas feature. True Zoom doesn't "know" anything about who is invited to a meeting, but that doesn't really matter. Canvas is the one responsible for displaying available meetings to students, sending email announcements when new meetings are created, and adding them to the course calendar, not Zoom. There should be an option to assign meetings to specific sections, groups, or individuals just as you can with assignments.

I'm having the same issue where I teach a course consisting of 10 sections all meeting online via Zoom. If students from all 10 sections are receiving notifications about meetings from every other section and all sections' meetings show up on the course calendar, the Zoom integration is basically useless and causes much more confusion than it resolves.

[rkolodny]

@jcrowe3717 I also have 10 sections in one course.  Has anyone figured out how to set up distinct Zoom rooms?  Zoom says not to forward links to specific sections.

Yikes!

[jcrowe3717]

Not that I have seen. Unfortunately, the problem seems to run both ways. I teach a class with 10 sections which have separated recitation meetings and a combined lecture. If you keep them joined as sections of one Canvas course you cannot schedule meetings for just the individual sections. But if you separate each section into its own course you cannot have them share meetings between courses. It's a lose-lose situation and I really wish they would address it.

[MDG1]

I have the same question.  I think it is going to be very confusing for kids with multiple sections of multiple courses to get all of these zoom emails that do not apply to them.  And what was called a "solution" here was NO SOLUTION. What solution did you find?  Did you schedule your zooms outside of canvas?

[and-hu]

As far as I can tell, the answer is to make them outside of Canvas or separate the sections into distinct Canvas sites and connect them with a Blueprint course if you have to. 

The recorded sessions are also an issue as we're being told FERPA means distinct sections can't see recordings of the other sections. The only way to do this is to keep the recordings unpublished on the Zoom Canvas tab and then appropriate assignments, discussions, or quizzes for posting the Zoom recording links and then restrict them to individual sections. A complete headache. 

Whoever created the LTI is who I hold responsible. If Zoom created the LTI to solicit users who wanted Canvas integration, then they need to update it with features that addresses these concerns. If Canvas created the LTI to appease users who needed to use Zoom, then they need to update it. 

[jcrowe3717]

It looks like the LTI is on Zoom's side, although I don't understand why they would set it up so that a specific meeting can only be linked to one course at a time (I have a course with split recitations and joint lectures so no matter how I structure things in Canvas there's no winning).

[physicslabmanag]

Hi,

I also have a similar issue, but over 30 sections. I do not think this solution would work, as it would still clutter up the course calendar with meeting superfluous to 29 other sections. Is canvas working on another solution? 

[a_p_g_robinson]

Edited to Add: Improved Solution...

Make all of the meetings in zoom as normal, then go to calendar and for each meeting follow from instruction (5) below, but only give a date to the appropriate section for each meeting - leave the others blank. Will test this with students tomorrow, but this ought to allow students to only have their own section's meetings in their calendar, and the teacher to have all the meetings in the zoom tab/app.

______________

There is a solution of sorts to this problem that does not involve having multiple meetings in the students calendars. It is not entirely ideal, but here is how it works:

1) First of all get all of your students in to their sections.

2) Make a single zoom meeting for the week in question. I suggest you make it at the time and date of the first meeting of the week, but it doesn't really matter.

3) Save the meeting

4) Go to the home page of the course and select View the Calendar at the bottom right.

5) In the calendar, click on the meeting you have just made and then click the edit button on the popup

6) On the next popup click "More Options"

7) On the next page, select "Use a different date for each section"

😎Set the meeting dates and times in the calendar for each section and then save.

Why this works - Zoom meeting links are persistent and not time sensitive, so even if you make a Zoom meeting for a specific time, if someone clicks the link at another time they will get in to the meeting (especially if you switch off waiting room, and enable join before host when setting up the original meeting).

There are some downsides to this approach, but they are all on the host. From the student's perspective they will have a single event in their calendar and when they click on the meeting they will get in to it.

Downsides - In the Zoom menu integration page, only the first meeting will be shown. Likewise in the Zoom app you will only have the first meeting. You will see them all in calendar view, but you will probably want to add an ICS file to your diary manually for each of the meetings you make. Also all of the sections have to have the same meeting title. Also all of the sections will have the same meeting link and password.

(Edited to add - I have checked with the students re what they are seeing in their calendars, and have checked that I can access meetings at the 'wrong' time, but I suppose that I should add that I have only just figured this out, so I will know in a week whether it is all going to work as expected! Will try to remember to update either way).

[renee4]

This is a possibly brilliant workaround, but I can't seem to get the meeting to actually duplicate (to show recurrence). How did it go for you and your students' view of the changes? 

[a_p_g_robinson]

It works! It was a tedious half an hour going through the fifty invites in the calendar setting each one to the appropriate section (having the calendar in weekly view helps), but I now have all the meetings showing to me in Zoom and the Zoom desktop client, but the students only see the meetings they are supposed to. Taking it one step further, if you then open the first of the recurring meetings using the Zoom web client you can then export an ICS calendar file, which can be imported into iCal, Outlook, Google Calendar etc, so that you can get the meeting in to your phone diary, and then you can add the specific students as invitees to send it to their diaries for belt and braces.

To make a recurring meeting, once I had clicked  I ticked a box marked "recurring meeting" just under the time zone box, in the second section of the form (time zone is the fifth item as I see it), and then further options appeared. I'd note that it sets the recurrence for the day you make the invite, rather than using the date you specify to work it out (for instance if you make a recurring weekly meeting starting on a Thursday, but you set the invite up on a Friday, then by default it picks Friday as the recurrence day, so you need to remember to alter this using the tick boxes that appear). It could be that the ability to make recurring meetings is something admins can switch on and off I guess.

[renee4]

This is not an acceptable situation because events are not actually treated as series AND cannot be duplicated once they already exist. It is needlessly tedious to have to set up class meetings this way (though big applause for finding a sort of work around, a_p_g_robinson!). It ALSO doesn't solve needing to be able to set up events on an actual, functional recurrence that reflects our reality: my class doesn't "just" repeat weekly on Mondays, my class repeats weekly, for example, on Monday/Tuesday/Thursday from 1-2, but the very same class also meets Fridays from 10-11. I should be able to set this up as ONE recurring event that exists as an editable series. 

[a_p_g_robinson]

Adding canvas section compatability is on the Zoom LTi roadmap according to a post I saw on the Zoom app dev forum ( https://devforum.zoom.us/t/api-calls-to-import-or-create-meetings-within-the-lti-pro-integration/211... ). I've not seen anything about handling recurring meetings properly although I've not dug very deep yet.

[themrsstephens]

Hi there, does anyone know why this says "SOLVED" when it isn't actually solved? Is it because the API is on the roadmap? I have to say, the Zoom page in Canvas not honoring what Section I am in is completely confusing. My first week of classes, I attended four zoom meetings that I actually did not need to. When I import the course calendars from Canvas into my Google calendar, it's the same issue. Absent the API, I wish Canvas would at least support user preferences on the Zoom tab to allow students to filter out which Zoom meetings apply to them and save it. 

[a_p_g_robinson]

There is a work-around (not sure I would call it a solution) that allows for the correct behaviour - ie students online seeing the meetings they need to, meetings correctly in the Zoom app, and one's diary, and the Canvas calendar. It is a PITA and time consuming for the person setting up the meetings, but for the students it just works as they would expect. I have detailed it above across a couple of mails. I had a quick look a week or so ago, and a better solution does not yet seem to have appeared yet.

[c_murphy]

The problem here is that Zoom integrates with the Canvas Calendar for the whole course, so now every section gets every Zoom link in their calendars. For courses with multiple sections, this is just unworkable. It's a shame. I hope it is fixed soon. 

[Seangt]

FYI Zoom has added sections to their LTI/API, and you can add meetings for specific sections now 🙂 There's specific admin setup, but once that's done the sections are available to select upon meeting setup. 

That said, Canvas does not support calendar events by section apparently. According to Zoom. So even though students can only see zoom meetings for their section within the Zoom LTI page, they will still see all sections' meetings in the calendar. It's listed as a limitation on the Zoom documentation on adding sections info to the Zoom LTI: 

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0063727#h_01GF1D3ZM87KQCG4H6JZEAPQ...

• For Canvas Calendars, sections are not supported
• Currently, Canvas only supports calendars for a course, group, or users, but not sections. 

I'll be adding another post about this so it's not "solved"