Upcoming Zoom Features Announced at Zoomtopia 2020

 

In their quest to improve the videoconferencing experience, Zoom announced a bunch of new features at their recent Zoomtopia event.

More immersive, engaging, collaborative meetings
New immersive backgrounds will allow hosts to set a custom background theme or create layouts that have participant videos arranged within a shared scene, like a classroom. 

 

Additionally, new ways to react to speaker content using animated reactions, such as thumbs up or down, a laughing emoji, a heart, a celebration emoji, and clapping (which will also come with audible clapping sounds.) 

 

 

Closed Captions
Zoom has finally announced that they are launching automatic closed captions as a base feature in Zoom. This comes after significant pressure was exerted on the company for not providing this feature. However, is will only be available in the main Zoom Room, not the breakout rooms, and it will only provide English language captions.

A Richer User Experience
Recently added to Zoom is High-Fidelity Music Mode in addition to background noise suppression. While right now users must opt-in to this service in their settings, Zoom announced that in the near future they plan to utilize AI to turn this mode on automatically when the proper conditions are detected.

AI is at the center of another planned upgrade to the user experience. Using artificial intelligence and natural language processing, Zoom cloud recording will be able to extract key insights from recording transcripts and make it easy to review meeting highlights, without having to watch the entire recording.

An Increase in Zoom Security
Zoom is also adding a video component to their waiting rooms so that hosts can see participants via video before admitting them to their meetings. This new, enhanced security feature will be available early next year and will hopefully put an end to the majority of Zoom bombings.

In other security news, end-to-end encryption of Zoom meetings is being slowly rolled out to both free and paid users. This upgrade will allow Zoom users to host up to 200 participants in an E2EE meeting.

More to Come
As these and other planned upgrades begin to roll out to all users, we at Learning Technologies will keep you updated on their implementation and usage. Keep watching this space!

October Updates to Flipgrid

 

What has changed?

October has brought several changes to Flipgrid. Previously, students could only respond to each other with a newly recorded video. Now students and instructors alike have the ability to leave text responses as well. 

All new Topics will have public comments automatically enabled on them; as an instructor, you can always disable this option in the Default Topics Settings at any time. You can also activate Moderation on these comments, so that they must be approved before being visible to other students. 

It is important to note that private comments are not yet available; however, Flipgrid has hinted that they are coming soon!

Other Updates

If you would like to use Flipgrid but have a large number of students to add to the system, you can now bulk upload student emails to Flipgrid using .csv files. 

For those of you who are music instructors and would like to incorporate Flipgrid into your courses, the company has also added music note stickers for use within students' videos. While not life-changing, it does add an extra layer of fun!

Respondus Announces a Beta-Version of Lockdown Browser

 

With hundreds of quizzes and exams moving to an online format, exam security has been at the forefront of instructors' minds. 

One tool in faculty members' arsenals has been the use of Respondus's LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor tools. 

Until recently, however, this program did not work with the Chromebooks that so many students are either issued or choose as a less expensive alternative to laptops and PCs. This is changing with Respondus's announcement that they will be rolling out a new Chromebook extension that will allow students to use both the LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor, the AI portion of Respondus that monitor's students activity during exams. 

Once the license administrator enables the Chromebook extension, instructors will need to do the following to allow for the use of the browser:

1. Go to the LockDown Browser Dashboard within Canvas 
2. Select “Require Respondus LockDown Browser for this exam” 
3. Expand “Advanced Settings” and select “Allow students to use LockDown Browser for Chromebook (beta)” 
4. Save the exam settings for LockDown Browser              

For students to install the LockDown Browser on their Chromebook, they'll need to follow the instructions below:

1. Log into the Chromebook start Google Chrome 
2. Log into Canvas and navigate to the exam that requires LockDown Browser  
3. Select the link for downloading and installing LockDown Browser 
4. From the Chrome web store, select “Add to Chrome” to install the LockDown Browser Extension 
5. Note: during the beta, this extension will only work with quizzes an instructor has enabled for use with LockDown Browser for Chromebook

For more information about this beta release, the following Knowledgebase article provides additional information about the beta release of LockDown Browser for Chromebook, including feature limitations and known issues. This article will be updated periodically during the beta.

September and October Updates to Canvas

 

There have been some recent updates to Canvas, as well as a few new updates coming in October to be excited about.  

An increase in analytics 

 

September saw an update to Canvas's analytics potential with the introduction of downloadable CSV files for missing assignments, late assignments, excused assignments, the class roster, and course activity data. 

 

This change provides instructors with table visualizations of essential course information via Canvas APIs into a consumable format.

 

The CSV format is especially helpful for instructors with large classes who may need to dig deeper into the data about their course to determine which students might be struggling or falling behind. 

 

This update will only affect instructors. Watch the screencast about the new feature below:

 

Global Navigation Update

 

This feature will be released on October 17th and will add an addition to the Global Navigation menu.  

 

The Recent History link will be located below the Inbox link and will allow users to access the most recent pages viewed in Canvas up to the last three weeks. 

 

This update will apply to all users. 

 

Updates to Notifications 

 

This is a minor update that will allow user-level notifications to match the design of the course-level Notifications page. Additional enhancements have been added to clarify notifications between each level.   

 

Additionally, for the Grades notification, the Send Scores in Emails option has also been added as a course-level notification preference.

 

This update will affect all users and be released on October 17th.