Due to the heavy use of Zoom we have enabled several default settings to maximize the user experience. In addition, some highly recommended best practices are included to allow for a safe and secure meeting for faculty, staff and students. This will help prevent unwanted guests from joining your meeting and potentially disrupting it with Zoom Bombing. Zoom Bombing is the practice of a non-authorized person accessing your Zoom Meeting and sharing offensive content. This practice has become more common since the reliance on Zoom has grown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Please continue reading this page to learn how to protect your meetings and give your guests the best possible meeting experience. 

Best Practices – Account Settings

In addition to the systemwide defaults set by Drexel IT, Zoom users can customize their own account default meeting settings to better meet their own specific needs. When logged in at drexel.zoom.us, click “Settings” in the left menu panel. Here you can change your own default settings. 

VCaP recommends the following settings and security measures to enhance your control over meetings and participant actions:

Enable: Require that all meetings are secured with one security option

Enable: Waiting Room

Enable: Require passcode for participants joining by phone

Enable: Embed passcode in invite link for one-click join

Enable: Mute all participants when they join a meeting

Enable: automated captions

If you require assistance scheduling your own meetings you can enable scheduling privileges to anyone with an active Drexel Zoom Pro account. 

Best Practices – Scheduling and Hosting Meetings

Personal Meeting ID (PMI): Refrain from using your PMI for ALL Zoom meetings. While it is certainly convenient, consistently recycling the same Meeting ID – particularly without security settings enabled – introduces risk to the user and meeting guests if the Meeting ID winds up in the wrong hands. Take the time to schedule meetings for specific uses and schedule a meeting with “no Fixed Time” under recurring meetings if you would like to use a static Meeting ID for certain groups, classes or clubs that meet often, but don’t follow a specific schedule (i.e., every Tuesday at 2pm). This is a more secure solution for ad hoc meetings than always relying on your PMI.  

The following features can be set when scheduling or hosting a live meeting:

• Registration: When appropriate, consider using the registration setting for Zoom meetings. By requiring guests to register you can gather more information about each guest and establish one added layer of security.
• Passcode:assigns an embedded passcode for people with the direct link, or a 10-digit passcode that can be entered manually by guests
• Waiting Room:allows people to go through the steps to join a meeting but doesn’t allow interaction with other guests until the host or hosts joins and allows them out of the waiting room
• Require authentication to join:this setting can currently only be used for others with an @drexel.edu address or another specific domain making this a great choice for classes or Drexel-specific meetings or events. For Zoom meetings that anticipate outside users one of the other two security settings should be enabled instead.
• Screen Sharing:Restrict Screen Sharing to Host Only unless attendees need to share. If an attendee share's their screen at the wrong time, the Host can stop that screen share.
• Remove a Participant: The Host can remove a participant permanently from a meeting by selecting that user in the manage participant's window.
• Lock Your Meeting: After a meeting begins the host can lock it in their Manage Participants panel. This prevents other users from entering the meeting. The Host can unlock the meeting if needed.

Best Practices – General

Lighting: Choose a well-lit area, preferably without light behind your back, this backlighting will wash out your face and make you less visible to your guests. In front of a window with natural light is best, but another light source that casts light on your face also works very well. 

Audio: First, choose a space with as little background noise as possible. Second, using headphones, earbuds or a headset – all with a built-in mic – will drastically improve the audio for both you and your guests. A microphone close to your face will prioritize your voice, rather than picking up all background audio at the same volume. While most computers do come with built-in mics, speakers and cameras these days, we would be happy to recommend affordable, supplemental devices to improve your meetings. For a quick overview of audio best practices you can also review this tutorial by Zoom.

Background: If you'd like to download a Drexel branded background to use during Zoom meetings you can find several at the bottom of this page. 

For more information and tutorials about using Zoom, visit https://support.zoom.us or contact the Drexel Zoom Admin Team at ZoomAdmin@drexel.edu or 215.895.2324.