Zoom's New Immersive View

 

 

Earlier this month, Zoom released a new immersive view that has many users pretty excited. 

Whether you want to create the feeling of being in a classroom, a boardroom, a conference auditorium, or your favorite place to catch up with friends, Zoom’s Immersive View assembles up to 25 participants in one fun, consistent meeting environment.

 

There are several pre-loaded backgrounds but you are also able to add your own. There is no minimum number of participants needed in order to use immersive view, you can upload your own immersive scenes, the seating plan can be changed and people's virtual representatives can be made larger or smaller. All of this is controlled by the meeting host, so participants only see what the host sees and no one can hijack the meeting. 

Immersive view is already enabled in Zoom but needs to be enabled in a meeting by clicking the four squares in the top-right corner of a meeting, where you’d normally go to switch between Gallery and Speaker views. 

 

Users need to have Zoom version 5.6.3 or higher. Additionally, MacOS users need OS version 13.3 (High Sierra) or above. Attendees not able to use Immersive View can still participate via Gallery View or Speaker View.

Canvas Updates for May 2021

Starting May 15th, 2021, the following updates will be made to Canvas:

 

Auto-Show Closed Captioning

Users can now enable captions to show by default in all Canvas videos. This change allows users to view captions added to videos by default without having to manually enable captions for each individual video.

Note: Videos embedded from third-party tools, such as YouTube, are not supported. Additionally, videos embedded from Canvas Studio videos are not yet supported but will be in a future release.

 

Student Annotation Assignments

Instructors can now use an annotated assignment type to upload a file for students to annotate and submit directly in Canvas.  

This change allows instructors to provide a file as an assignment and allow students to annotate the file directly in Canvas. Currently students have to either print the file and take a photo to submit, or use a third-party tool to complete the submission.

 

Course Templates

A course ID can be designated as a course template for all new courses created in an account. This functionality is supported for both manually created courses and SIS import. 

This change provides a consistent user experience for students and will ensure all base materials are included with each new course by an institution’s admins and/or authors.