Zoom Meeting Safety

By now, we've all heard about Zoombombing, or, heaven forbid, we've experienced it. Zoombombing occurs when someone forces their way into Zoom meetings and proceeds to behave in an inappropriate fashion. Zoom has rolled out a lot of new features to help combat this practice, but what exactly are they and how can the average user implement them? We'll be covering several of these features in this blog post, as well as including tutorial sheets that will walk users through each step of enabling higher security settings. 

• Zoom Waiting Rooms. Zoom waiting rooms are your first line of defense again uninvited, unwanted Zoom attendees. By setting your meeting up with a waiting room, it gives you, the host, the ability to control who can join the meeting and when. After your meeting has begun, you can even send people back to the waiting room, in case someone manages to get through your security. To learn how to set up a waiting room, check out our Zoom Security tutorial. Once you have enabled the waiting room, follow our tutorial for how to add it to scheduled meetings.
• Don't use your personal Zoom ID for public-facing meetings. If you've been using Zoom for awhile, you may have set up a Zoom "vanity" URL. This make your URL easy to remember and is handy for sharing. You may also use your personal meeting ID, which is 10 digit code. If you're having a meeting with just your students or coworkers, using these options is usually just fine. If you're having a public-facing meeting, however, schedule a new meeting with a random meeting code. This makes it more difficult for someone to guess your new meeting ID and helps prevent "bombers."
• Control screen-sharing. Sharing your screen is a great tool in Zoom. It can let students see what you're doing on your computer and makes it easy to share content. But do you want all of your students or potential bombers to be able to share their screens as well? Quite possibly not. You can easily toggle the ability to share screens on or off; the instructions for this are included in our Zoom Security tutorial.
• Turn off private chat. Private chat can be useful during long meetings to let participants communicate between each other without having to include the whole group in their chat. This is also, however, potentially distracting and, worse, a great way for Zoom-bombers to wreak havoc.
• Know how to remove participants if you need to. If for some reason an incredibly dedicated Zoombomber manages to get through all of your security steps thus far, you will need to be able to remove that user. 

There are some very dedicated Zoom-bombers out there. These steps won't necessarily block all of them, but they will deter the majority. Zoom is frequently releasing new security features; we'll keep you posted on them as they develop!

Academic Honesty and Exam Security

In this time of remote learning, academic honesty is at the forefront of many (if not all) faculty members' minds. How do we ensure that our students are meeting their course outcomes? That they are honestly taking their own tests and not using increasingly sophisticated ways to cheat? Switching to remote teaching is hard enough without having increased worries about academic honesty. 

Are students actually cheating? The answer seems to be yes. The explosion of websites like Quizlet and CourseHero have led to students openly bragging about using Quizlet to cheat. In an article in Inside Higher Ed, in 2018 it was reported that 12 students at Texas Christian University were suspended for allegedly cheating using Quizlet. Students at other universities talked about academic dishonesty, like studying likely test questions (broken down by instructor and course) or by opening Quizlet in a separate window while they took their test online. (1) 

So what are instructors to do? There are two main methods for preventing academic dishonesty: creating increased exam security or identifying and switching to alternate assessments. 

How can we increase exam security in a time when it feels like everything is less secure? There are a few options built into Canvas that can be easily deployed, and then a few University-wide tools that you can use to promote academic honesty. 

• Randomize your questions. Using publisher test banks or creating Question Groups in Canvas will allow you to provide extra test questions for students to answer. Once you have extra questions, you can tell the exam to only pull a portion of them. This ensures that not all students will see all of the same questions.
• Randomize your answers. If you're giving a multiple choice test, using the checkbox on the Quiz Details page will randomize the answers to your randomized questions will eliminate even more opportunities for students to share answers between each other. 
• Use an exam access code. This lets you control who has access to the assessment.
• Only allow students to see one question at a time and limit backtracking. This keeps students from seeing the whole assessment and snapping a photo of it to share with others. 
• Put a time limit on your quizzes, tests, and exams. By using a time limit, students don't have time to look up each of the answers in their book, notes, or on Quizlet. But don't make the time too tight; leave students enough time to ponder their answer, especially if the question is short answer. A good rule of thumb is two minutes per question.  
• Use a lockdown browser. ESU provides Repondus Lockdown browser to all faculty during this time. What a lockdown browser does is open a new browser for students to take their tests in that won't let them navigate to other pages, print the exam, screen-cap it, exit without submitting the exam, etc. Respondus Lockdown browser integrates with Canvas. 
• Use Respondus Monitor. This is a step above the Lockdown browser. Monitor uses AI and a student's webcam to note any "irregularities" in the testing session (the student leaves the computer, picks up their phone, talks to someone, etc.) and flags it. It then makes these irregularities available to the faculty member for review. If you're interested in using Respondus Monitor, please contact Learning Technologies first, as it requires a few more steps for setup. 
• Do Zoom proctoring. Slightly lower tech than Respondus Monitor, but you can have students join a Zoom meeting and then take the assessment. This allows you to watch them. If you have a large class, however, this can be difficult to manage. 

What if you don't feel that any of these options will make your assessment truly secure? Firstly, consider that very few assessments are truly secure. Students are coming up with increasingly sophisticated ways to cheat. If you want to be 100% certain, however, consider changing the type of assessment you use from a quiz or exam to an alternative assessment. These alternative assessments provide students with a chance to demonstrate hands-on proficiency, rather than choosing the correct answer from a list of incorrect ones. Some alternative assessments to consider:

• Journals (using OneNote or Google Drive)
• Papers
• Video demonstrations or short lectures (using Flipgrid, Zoom, Adobe Spark, or Screencast-o-matic)
• Presentations (using PowerPoint, Canva, or Zoom)
• Visuals like posters, infographics, webpages (using Adobe Spark, Canva, or Infogram)
• Discussions (using Canvas Discussions or Flipgrid)
• Peer Reviews (using either Canvas Discussions or Assignments)

Ensuring that your students adhere to academic honesty is a difficult task, especially when teaching and learning is occurring remotely. With these suggestions in mind, however, you can increase your assessment security or change the type of assessment so that academic dishonesty is harder for your students to commit. 

As always, please contact Learning Technologies with any questions!

____________
1) McKenzie, Lindsay. "Learning Tool or Cheating Aid?" Inside Higher Ed, May 14, 2018. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/14/professors-warned-about-popular-learning-tool-used-students-cheat

Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark now integrates with Canvas--but what is Adobe Spark? 

Spark is a quick and easy way to create graphics, videos, simple websites, presentations, and so much more. Put succinctly: It's a graphic design app that students and faculty can use, even if they have no graphic design experience. 

All ESU students and faculty have access to Adobe Spark using their University SSO credentials. Additionally, Learning Technologies has created two user tutorials on how to use Adobe Spark with Canvas; one for faculty and one for students. You'll find them attached at the bottom of this post. 

So what, exactly, can you have students use Spark for? Consider the following:

• Replace PowerPoint presentations with a Spark presentation including the students' narration, video, etc. and then save it as a video that can be played anywhere. 
• Take photos of a topic, add music, narration, VFX, and turn it into a descriptive video. 
• Rather than writing generic book or lab reports, use Spark to mix in images, icons, sound bites, and other multimedia.
• Many students either create or consume memes. Have students create their own meme that covers a topic in your class.
• Assign students the task of creating fliers or posters for an event or topic. These can be easily and creatively done using Spark.
  

If you've ever wanted students to create a graphics-based assignment but don't want to have them use Photoshop or Publisher, this is a great way to incorporate those kinds of assessments without utilizing more complicated programs. It just takes a little Spark.

Faculty Tutorial: https://bit.ly/3aMZmiJ
Student Tutorial: https://bit.ly/2ULET86

Questions? Contact Learning Technologies!

How to Add a Virtual Background in Zoom

By now you may have seen some of the neat virtual backgrounds you can use in Zoom (rumor has it that our own Dr. Gibson is holed up in a posh New York apartment!) These virtual backgrounds can serve several purposes: 

• They can be amusing (like the posh NYC apartment)
• They can hide whatever is behind you in your camera view, like Halloween decorations or whatever your toddler happens to be doing.
• They can serve to identify where you're from, which is what we're going to show you today with these awesome ESU virtual backgrounds.  

In order to use a virtual background, you first have to choose your background image, then follow a few simple steps. We're going to take you through the steps first, then show you how to find the ESU backgrounds. 

• Firstly, make sure your PC or Mac is running Zoom version 4.6 or higher. 
• Depending on your operating system, you will need to meet the technical requirements listed on Zoom's Virtual Background support page. 
• For best results, use a solid color drape or background behind you and don't wear that same color or you'll blend in and become your virtual background.
• Before you complete the next step, make sure you are logged out of the Zoom desktop client/portal or this won't work.
• Once you've got everything set up, navigate to the Zoom website and log in. On the left hand side, you'll see an option that says Settings. Select it and then scroll down until you get to Virtual Background. Make sure that toggle is turned on. 
• Log out of the web portal and sign back into the desktop Zoom client/portal.
• Click your profile picture in the upper-right-hand corner and choose Settings from the drop down menu. 
• Once in settings, choose the option for Virtual Background, then add your preferred background using the plus + icon on the right. You should then get a preview of your virtual background
• When you have chosen the background image, close the settings window and you're ready for your meeting!

Now for the good stuff! The ESU virtual background photos. Right click on them and use Save Image As in order to keep them for yourself and represent ESU as you Zoom!