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Zoom Video Conferencing

Zoom is a cloud-based video conferencing solution that enables faculty, staff and students to collaborate, teach and learn from anywhere. The service is used for online teaching, training, remote support, audio calls and meetings.

Zoom is available to all Aims faculty, staff and students when logging in with their Aims email address using the ‘Sign In with Google’ option. This provides a basic (free) license of Zoom. Students may request a paid license by submitting a support ticket.

How to Sign In to Zoom

You may be required to sign in to Zoom with your Aims account to access a meeting or meeting recording. The steps below will explain how to sign in using Aims single sign-on (SSO) or your Aims Google account.

Sign in with Aims SSO (Recommended)

Sign In With Google

Zoom meetings involving counseling or personal health information (PHI) require a special license. Please contact the IT Help Desk to request a license.
 

Zoom for Large Meetings and Public Events

Zoom Webinar offers a more controlled environment ideal for large meetings and public events. Webinars are generally used to host large meetings and public events where the meeting link is shared with others outside of Aims. Zoom Webinars are “view-only” meetings where attendees enter the meeting in listen-only mode and do not interact with one another by default. They can only see the host’s video and screen share. Hosts can control who sees attendee chat submissions and use Q&A and polling features which allow hosts to manage and share attendee input after previewing it to make sure it’s acceptable.

Explore the differences between a Zoom Meeting and Webinar.

Zoom Webinar licenses are a premium service and must be requested through a Help Desk Ticket

Zoom Privacy & Security

Zoom is a powerful video conferencing solution that allows people around the world to connect virtually. However, if not configured and secured appropriately, Zoom can easily be abused by uninvited participants and hackers resulting in a disrupted meeting and an embarrassing or offensive situation.

Keeping Zoom Meetings Secure - Zoombombing


In order to keep your Zoom meetings secure and free of uninvited people, never post the meeting link, meeting ID or passcode publicly such as to a website that does not require authentication or on social media. Meeting information should be shared through authenticated means only such as Aims email or the D2L portal.

“Zoombombing” is the term for when individuals “gate-crash” Zoom meetings. These uninvited guests share their screens or video feed to disturb real attendees with bothersome material including pornographic or violent content. These acts are often perpetrated via Zoom links that have been made public.

Public Meeting Disclaimer: Public Zoom meetings are highly discouraged because the risk of Zoombombing is significantly higher. If you must make your meeting public, please require registration and manually approve the registrants to ensure each participant is thoroughly screened. It is the meeting organizer’s responsibility to ensure that their meeting is adequately configured to avoid misuse.

We recommend using Zoom Webinar for public events as they offer a more controlled environment. Please see the “Large Meetings & Public Events” heading above for more information.

Important:

Do not record meetings that involve confidential data or FERPA protected information as this data is not approved to be stored in the Zoom cloud service. Consult Aims Information Security if you have a need to record this type of meeting.

Report Zoombombing

While Zoombombing disruptions often take the form of profanity, hate speech, or pornography, they have also been known to include threats. If you receive threats during a Zoom meeting, please notify Aims Campus Safety & Security immediately.

If you are the victim of Zoombombing, please report it by emailing the Aims Information Technology department.

Please include the following information:

  • The date and time of the incident
  • The meeting ID of the session that was interrupted
  • A summary of what happened
  • What action was taken (e.g., was the meeting halted, or was the intruder removed)
  • Indicate whether or not the session was recorded. If it was, please retain the recording if needed for an investigation.

We encourage you to take steps in advance of a session to make it harder for uninvited guests to break into your session, using the recommendations outlined above. You can also utilize the following Zoom security resources:

Best Practices for Securing Your Zoom Meetings - a walk-through guide on the various security settings for virtual meetings. 

Best Practices for Securing Your Virtual Classroom - This excellent Zoom blog gives advice for those using Zoom for remote teaching.

Privacy & Security Settings

The settings below will help you get the most out of your Zoom meetings while protecting yourself, meeting participants and the college from online misuse. We recommend using as many of these options as you reasonably can to protect your meetings.

Zoom FAQ

Zoom Resources

Cloud-based services like Zoom are continuously and often rapidly changing to meet customer needs. Because of this, we’ve provided a number of Zoom support pages below to help you get the most out of the solution.