Zoom Video Conferencing

Zoom logoIf your instructor selects to use Zoom Video Conferencing from within Canvas or outside of Canvas, follow these instructions.


A Zoom meeting inside Canvas:

How to Join a Zoom Meeting - Canvas Student

In your Canvas course, click the Zoom link in the course navigation menu. Zoom may be found anywhere in the menu, not just at the bottom as shown in the example.

Zoom in the course tools menu

The Zoom dashboard will open inside your Canvas course, and will list all meetings that have been scheduled.

  1. Before joining a meeting, make sure your Time Zone is set to your local time zone (San Antonio is Central/Chicago Time).
  2. If you are ready to join the meeting, click the Join button.
Sample scheduled Zoom meeting

A Zoom meeting outside of Canvas

If you have not joined a Zoom session before, follow these instructions.

Launching a Zoom Meeting for the First Time

In order to launch a Zoom meeting, you will be provided a link (such as alamo.zoom.us/my/useralamo or alamo.zoom.us/j/1234567890) in your Alamo e-mail or Canvas inbox by the person who scheduled the meeting. Click on this link, and it will open in your default browser.

Sample Zoom error message

The Zoom application will either automatically download or prompt you to download depending on your browser settings. (If prompted to download, save to your preferred location.)

  1. Once downloaded, click the file to install.
  2. If you run into an issue with your download, you can click on download & run Zoom to start the installation again.
  3. If you prefer, you can join the session from your web browser without installing the Zoom application.

NOTE: You cannot share your screen from the web version of Zoom.

How to open a Zoom meeting from the exe file

You will be presented with a dialogue box showing the progress of the Zoom installation. Your meeting will start once the installation is complete.

Sample Zoom startup screen

If the host has set the meeting to not allow participants to join first, you will be prompted to wait until the host starts the meeting.

NOTE: If you are the host, you can login at this time to start the meeting

Sample Zoom welcome message

For all future meetings, you will not have to install the Zoom application. Instead, you will be prompted to Open Zoom Meetings.

Open Zoom button

How to Participate in a Zoom Session as a Student

View the following video for information about how to participate in a Zoom session as a student. Select the [cc] button within the YouTube video player window for Subtitles/closed captioning (c). Select the button if you wish to view the video Full screen (f).