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Improving your Videoconferencing Experience Tips

These tips should be helpful for you as you try to improve your meeting technical quality

  1. Split Audio and Video: Zoom and other platforms allow you to connect to the audio component of your conference with your phone. Look at the phone number and conference ID on the meeting invite, and use your phone for audio, and your computer only for video connection.
  2. Turn off video (unless necessary). Video increases bandwidth demands, even more if multiple people are sharing their video at the same time. A good practice is to use video at the beginning, but you can ask people to cut their video for all but the presenter/host.
  3. Check your environment.
    • Not a good idea for you or anyone else in your household to be streaming great Netflix programs like the Tiger King while simultaneously trying to stream your class Zoom session.
    • Be aware of how many people are using the internet in your household.   The more people actively using the same internet connection will experience more problems.
    • How far are you from your router? Could there be any interference from other devices (Microwave ovens are a frequent culprit).
  4. WiFi is less reliable and inconsistent especially for streaming.   If at all possible, plug directly into your cable modem with an ethernet cable..
  5. Check your technology:
    • Sometimes one will need to reboot their computer to get better performance.
    • Sometimes rebooting one’s internet router will improve performance.  Contact your internet service provider for specific instructions on how best to do this if you aren’t already familiar with this process.
    • Some older computers might not be able to handle the video requirements to adequately process Zoom video streams.
      • Check if you have other open software that may be accessing the web. It  may be useful to close any other non-essential applications
      • You might consider using another computer/laptop or replacing your existing computer/laptop.
  6. How about your home network?
    • Sometimes people have lower level’s of internet service.   They may need to call their internet service provider to see if there is an option for faster service.   Sometimes increasing speed is a switch they flip on their end that will magically increase speed (most likely for an increased fee).  Sometimes they may need to send out new equipment and/or a tech to increase speed.  Sometimes faster options aren’t available in your area.   You may need to explore other internet providers.
    • Mobile hotspotting is a notoriously bad and inconsistent internet connection, especially now that so many people are at home relying on it.   Consider getting cable/DSL/fiber options with either Comcast or Centurylink
    • If your router is more than 6 years old, you may benefit of updating it to a newer model.

Zoom Security Updates

UW Zoom Team Message:

Greetings, UW Zoom users.
We are writing to address recent concerns about privacy in Zoom and to reassure and educate UW Zoom users about how to use Zoom with confidence. This message contains information about:

·    New UW Zoom privacy FAQs

·    Changes to UW Zoom screen sharing

·    Changes to Zoom app in Canvas meeting notifications

·    Zoom login on iOS with Facebook
New UW Zoom privacy FAQs
The UW takes the privacy of those who use our online enterprise software very seriously. UW-IT and the UW Privacy Office have crafted an FAQ that describes how privacy and data are protected when using Zoom. Please consult the UW Zoom privacy FAQs to learn more.
UW Zoom screen sharing
Last week, based on feedback from the education community, Zoom changed the default settings for sharing a screen during a meeting. Zoom made this change as a security measure in response to reported incidents of unauthorized users gaining access to the meeting URL or ID, entering the meeting and sharing inappropriate content. In an effort to protect users, Zoom changed the default setting so that only meeting hosts could share their screen during a meeting. Unfortunately, Zoom did not communicate this change to users before making it.

You can change this default setting to again enable meeting participants to share their screens. To change meeting settings, you need to be signed into Zoom so that you are recognized as the meeting host.

Changing the default screen sharing settings should be coupled with additional meeting security settings. We strongly recommend that you enable the Waiting room and disable Join before host in your meeting settings.
Change default screen sharing settings
First, sign into the UW Zoom web portal at washington.zoom.us.

To change settings for all future meetings:

1.  After signing into Zoom, in the left sidebar, click Settings, then click In Meeting (Basic).

2.  Scroll down to the heading Screen Sharing.

3.  Under Who can share? select All participants.

All future meetings scheduled in this account will have the ability for everyone to share their screen unless you change the setting within an individual meeting.

To change settings for an individual meeting:

1.  In your Zoom meeting, at the bottom of the screen, to the right of the green Share button, click the up-arrow.

2.  On the menu that appears, click Advanced Sharing Options and then change Who can share to All participants.

3.  Close out of the Advanced Sharing Options. The new options will be updated.

You can change additional settings to further protect your Zoom meeting space.
Zoom app in Canvas meeting notifications
In response to requests from instructors, UW-IT has turned off meeting notifications in the Zoom app in Canvas. Previously, the Zoom app in Canvas would send meeting notifications via Canvas conversations every time a meeting was created, edited, or deleted. Students will no longer receive notifications when meetings are created, edited, or deleted. Please direct your students to check their Canvas calendar for UW Zoom meeting times, and review their Calendar notification settings.
Zoom login on iOS client with Facebook 
Recently, the media has reported concerns about Zoom’s “Login with Facebook” feature. Zoom originally implemented the “Login with Facebook” feature using the Facebook SDK for iOS (Software Development Kit) in order to provide users with another convenient way to access the platform. However, Zoom was made aware on Wednesday, March 25, 2020, that the Facebook SDK was collecting device information unnecessary for providing the services. To prevent this, Zoom removed the Facebook SDK from their iOS client. Read Zoom’s statement about the Facebook SDK to learn how to update your iOS client.
Please contact help@uw.edu with questions.The UW Zoom team

Canvas resource page for CoE faculty

Remember to visit the recently developed Canvas Resource Page! From their authors:

“This resource site highlights instructional tools and options in Canvas and demonstrates how these tools can be used to engage and support students in online courses. Each module is focused on a different aspect of online teaching in Canvas and includes an overview, and, where it’s relevant, an example from a colleague and a template to copy and customize for your course. This site will be updated and improved continuously, and it’s a collaborative, ongoing project that all College of Education faculty and instructional staff are invited to join.”

Cycle 112

Travel & Requisitions

I’ve started a new project to faciltate requests relating to travel and requisitions.

The goal is to take workflows and user interface that we worked out for appointment requests in the NARF project and apply them to travel and purchasing. Our goal is create a clear and focused form that uses our institutional data to provide help and sensible defaults.

Currently we are iterating through prototypes with the fiscal team, deciding what the core required fields of a request and developing processes to handle requests.

Work Complete

Applicant Review

  • (Complete) Fix error in rubric score administration.

Student

  • (Complete) Add placement view by cohort. This new tool is intended to help program directors and administors maintain placement records. It shows a list of all students in a given cohort and all placements associated with those students while they were enrolled in the cohort major.
  • (Complete) Fix program completes were not represented on student list views. System automatically displays degree earned information from official UW record, but we also provide a way to record when students successfully complete a program without earning a UW degree. These “Program Complete” records were displaying correctly on the individual student record, but were not represented in the “Latest Status” column shown on table views of multiple students.
  • (Complete) Add tools for creating Cohort Groups. While most of the cohort configurations in our college Student database include rules to automatically create and populate individual cohort groups a few must be populated manually. This change allows program administrators to create cohort instances as needed.
  • (Complete) Mentor search. In the Placements section, the Mentors index page show a list of mentors in placements over the recent year. There is a search field at the top of that page that can be used to search for specific mentors, including mentors from older placements.
  • (Complete) Add WA Certificate numbers to mentor payment report. This helps with payment processing and provides another opportunity to review missing data for end-of-year PESB reporting.
  • (Complete) Fix save mentor displayed error. Mentor was saving correctly but redirecting to invalid URL.
  • (Complete) Authorization request log updated for generated unique HTML id system.

Test Scores

  • (Complete) Clean up import preview. Administrative interface supports importing test scores from agency provided data files. Previous version displayed the entire import file followed by list of import previews. This was hard to spot check without scrolling back and forth. Now import tool shows one agency record followed by its import preview, then the next agency record, …

Infrastructure

  • (Complete) Fixed other database menu always went to About page. Clicking the COE or W logo in upper right of a college database shows a menu of all college databases. Intended behavior is that menu leads directly to the target database if the user is logged in and authorized, otherwise to an About page
  • (Complete) Upgrade third party libraries.

Cycle 111

12/30/2019 – 1/24/2020

Work Complete

Applicant Review

  • (Complete) Delete rubric score was (working, but) displaying an error message. This has been corrected.

Student

  • (Complete) Add placements view by Cohort. This new report includes all students in a given cohort and all placements for those students that occurred while the student was enrolled in the cohort major. This view helps program directors review and update their placement records for student teaching.
  • (Fixed) Program completes are now correctly represented on list views of students. Programs where students may successfully finish a program without earning a UW degree (example: Danforth) may enter “Program Complete” in the college Student database. Previously these completes appeared on the student detail page, but not on pages that have a table list of students with a status column.
  • (Complete) WA State Teacher Certificate number is included on Mentor Payment report.
  • (Complete) Added search tool to placement mentor list.
  • (Complete) Added tools to create new Cohort instances (student groups) from the Cohort Settings page. Most Cohort are automated rules which create and populate new Cohort instances. A few Cohort types do not have rules and groups must be created and populated by staff.

Person

  • (Fix) Authorization request log helper once again provides default log messages.

Test Scores

  • (Complete) Rework test score import preview to display the source record adjacent to its parsed import record preview. Previously all of the source records were displayed in a table, then all of the import previews followed. New view is easier to spot check.

Infrastructure

  • (Fixed) Other database menu (click COE logo in upper right of any college database) always took user to an About page. Now, if user clicks menu from a context where they are logged in and they have permission on the target system they are taken directly to their destination.

Cycle 110

12/31/2019

Last few weeks have include substantial work on Placement data in the college Student database. I’ve also been doing early stage work on a couple of new projects:

  • Update to the college Course Planning database that will modernize the user interface and make the back-end synchronize processes more robust.
  • Prototype of a system to handle travel approval and reimbursement requests.

Work Complete

Student

  • (85% complete) Major reworking of Placement tooling. See the Placements Revision article for details.
  • (Complete) PESB bulk update tool has log last Weeks, Hours, Experience applied to a given quarter.
  • (Fixed) Bug was causing multiple Tracked Issue records to be created in Student database based on Tracked Issues in Applicant Review.

Test Scores

  • (Complete) System chooses what ACT and SAT test types to import from UW Data Warehouse based on certification requirement rules, adding a new rule will cause the rule’s test variant (assessment) to be imported into local college database and available on Basic Skills and Certification tools.
  • (Complete) Add new SAT test types.

Placements Revision

In Autumn 2019 we implemented a major revision to student placement data in the college Student database. Here are the motivating factors.

  • Additional fields need to be tracked for Washington state PESB reporting.
  • Placement data has substantial set of tools and reports and these were difficult to find within the Student database menus and links.
  • Important fields only appeared deep in the interface.
  • We want to delegate management of placement data to programs. Placement edit form was hard to use.

Placement Context

To begin addressing these issues we moved “Placements” out into its own application context. This means a view of the application that has a Placements title, menu, and home page. Within the Placements context we can make assumptions about what the user is trying accomplish and provide focused navigation and support.

Career Data

Historically we had treated outside “Career” data as a type of placement. The Career records could theoretically contain any external positions of our students (e.g. alumni jobs). In practice these records are almost entirely based on import of Washington state OSPI public school teacher and administrator data.

To support career data we have added several fields to described jobs at schools. These fields were rarely useful for actual student experience placements and resulted in a long form with a lot of optional fields, distracting from the important information.

To resolve this, we have moved Career data into their own set of records, leaving the existing Placement records focused on learning experiences of current COE students.

Placement Report

We added a general placement report. User can filter this report to specific academic quarter and placement type.

Student View

Previously, in the college Student database, Placements were represented as a custom block. As placement lists got long this view was hard to scan for important information.

The revised version lists Placement records as a table view with the few critical fields highlighted. When a table row is clicked on a slide-out sidebar shows the details of that placement.

Notes

Notes can be attached to a placement record. Notes are visible in the placement detail sidebar.

Placement Form

The Placement add/edit form has been cleaned up to make it easier to use.

  • Fields related to career records are removed.
  • Placement periods styles (quarter, academic year, dates) can be changed.
  • New institution can be added within the form.
  • Mentors can be edited within the form.

Help Pages

Added a system to display help articles as slide-out sidebar. This allows us to give users access to extra explanation and instructions where they need it.

The system is initially used for the new Placement Form.

Cycle 109

10/21/2019 – 11/1/2019

Work Complete

Applicant Review

  • (Done) Button to import ACT/SAT scores from central UW SDB. Our bulk import of test scores only looks for recent test scores. Occasionally applicants have applicable ACT/SAT test scores from 10+ years back. Our staff has ability to add these scores as Basic Skills Evidence with one click.
  • (Done) Certificate records for applicants that do not enroll are deleted with application, approximately 1 year after processing.
  • (Fix) User authorization page was showing double labels for check boxes.

Courses

My next major projects are in the Courses database. While I am building out new features I plan to update the interface and aggressively strip out unused features. We also want to move this project to a more modern and robust software stack.

We’ve shared the Courses project with other UW units, but now are planning substantial changes for COE business processes. I’ve created a new project fork allows us more freedom to make substantial changes.

  • (Done) Create new Courses project in version control system.
  • (Done) Implement two stage bootstrapping that allows legacy Course application and new Laravel based application to run from the same project code base and same root URL.

NARF (Hiring)

  • (Done) Show all other current requests on appointment request detail page. Previously this only showed requests that had overlapping appointment dates. New view provides more complete context. “Current” is defined as requests for future dates or a request whose end date has not yet passed.
  • (Done) Quarter date helper improved. The original quarter date picker showed a chronological academic year based on the appointment period start, this wasn’t always a helpful suggestion list, especially at the end of an academic year. New tool starts with the quarter that includes the appointment period start and also shows the next three quarters, summer terms, and academic year. A radio checkbox indicates when the appointment period dates exactly match a quarter.
  • (Done) Change input label to “Current Worker Status”. The goal is to help user understand that form is asking for worker status as of “today”, “Does this worker have a current active UW appointment?”
  • (Done) Next Request button for HR approvals. Provide routing to allow HR review to happen sequentially without returning to list view of requests.
  • (Done) Add new position type “Student: Research Hourly”.
  • (Done) Add “Appointment Canceled in Workday” request status and banner message. This is used occasionally when a request was fully processed, but the appointment was later canceled. WARNING: The scope of NARF is only New Appointment Request processing, it does not attempt to represent the current status of active appointments. This new feature is a gray area exception that properly describes the outcome of the request.

Student

  • (Done) Purge old mentor roles with goal of labeling student teaching mentors as “Lead Mentor” or “Mentor”. Work with Institutional Researcher and TEP team to identify unused historic mentor role on student placement record. Deleted or renamed old mentor relationships.
  • (Done) Mentor payment report is now based on mentors with new role label “Lead Mentor”.

Test Scores

  • (Fixed) Visiting the URL for step 2 of add-test-score workflow caused an error. Now it redirects back to beginning of process.
  • (Complete) The test score person match routine (compare agency test data to college applicants and students and link test scores) now also updates Basic Skills

Infrastructure

  • (Fixed) Focus search box after animation. Previously on clicking the Search button the cursor would be placed in search field and then an animation would slide the search panel down into view. In Chrome, the browser’s search suggestions would be rendered at the original search input position, after the slide the input was covered by suggestions. This fix allows the browser suggestion list to align correctly.
  • (Done) Upgrade NARF project to Laravel 6.X. Also upgrade JavaScript build dependencies and security issues.
  • (Done) Upgrade EDUC project to Laravel 6.X. Investigate and resolve slow style sheet build times. This was caused by URL transformation plugin that our project was not using.
  • (Done) Upgrade AddCodes project to Laravel 6.X.