Multi-Course Zoom Licence: Best Practices

When teaching remotely, there may be some instances where having a single Zoom licence available for multiple courses, or members of the teaching team, may be required or beneficial.

This would include the following the following scenarios: 

  1. A course in which an instructor teaches synchronous lectures and TAs run synchronous labs or seminars
  2. A group of instructors who are team teaching a single course
  3. A department/college that has purchased a large meeting add-on or webinar licence that is being used by multiple courses
  4. A combination of any of the above scenarios

Best Practices 

Some additional planning and preparation is required to ensure that licences being utilized by multiple members of an instructional team run smoothly. The following recommendations will assist you in setting up an organizational account. If you find that your course requires additional support, please contact the Instructional Technology Specialist team. 

Requesting an Organizational Account 

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Organizational Account Information 

  • For Organization/Group Name, provide the course code or department name. (i.e., ACCT*1000) 
  • For Preferred Central Login Account Name, enter the name you wish the account to use (i.e., acct1000) 
    • Please note, if possible, it is preferred the account names be 8 characters in length. There may be instances (i.e., creating two TA accounts for a course) where a longer name is necessary (i.e., ahss1000.ta1 and ahss1000.ta2) 
  • For Email Alias, leave this blank or copy the text from the field above. 
  • The remaining required settings can be left on their default values. 
  • Click Next Page to continue. 

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Organization Account Owner Information 

  • For Owner’s Name, provide the name of your department chair, dean, or director. The appropriate person will depend on the level of the account (i.e., course, department, or college) 
    • Org (or course) accounts are owned by the department chair or dean so they can be managed and redistributed to the current instructional team, as necessary. 
  • For Owner’s Central Login Account, provide the first part of their @uoguelph.ca email (e.g., if their email is jdoe@uoguelph.ca, enter jdoe). 
  • For Owner’s Authority, select the appropriate designation from the dropdown list. 
  • For Department Name and Number, locate this information using the University of Guelph Directory. The Department field provides a searchable list of names and numbers.
  • Click Next Page to continue. 

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Once accounts are created, contact CourseLink Support to facilitate adding the Zoom Pro licence and providing the account access to CourseLink.  

  • Note: Instructors are responsible for adding the Org account, with instructor or TA permissions, to the individual CourseLink course sites. 

Scheduling Classes and Seminars 

  • You cannot host two meetings at the same time with the same Zoom licenceConcurrent labs or seminars would require separate licences.
  • Depending on the complexity of your licence usage, you may wish to assign one person to be responsible for the scheduling of classes, labs, and seminars for the account to make sure there is no overlap in usage.
  • For licences attached to organization accounts, consider taking advantage of the Outlook calendar options to keep course meetings and prep time (i.e., creating polls, breakout rooms, etc.) organized. This can help to prevent scheduling conflicts and indicate which individual is using the licence at a given time. The calendar is not used to schedule the actual Zoom meetings. The example below shows a weekly calendar for a licence used in two courses, one of which has six, one-hour seminars. 

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  • Naming conventions for meetings and recordings will be very important for licences shared by multiple courses. It is recommended to include the course code in the meeting name to make it easily identifiable. (i.e., CODE*1000 Lecture, CODE*1000*01 Seminar)
  • For labs and seminars, you may consider adding the first name or initials of the TA for additional clarity. (i.e., CODE*1000*01 Lab - Carolyn)
  • For lectures, schedule any course meetings using the CourseLink Zoom integration. This can be done by accessing CourseLink using the organizational account login. 

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  • For labs and seminars, consider scheduling these events using the Zoom website or Desktop client. The join URL for these meetings can then be shared in Content modules where the access is restricted to members of a section of the course (i.e., Section 0101). This will help to restrict access to labs and seminars to the students registered in that section. This restricted access can be created using Release Conditions. 

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  • If you’d like to allow another user to create meetings on your behalf, you can choose to give them scheduling privilege by going to Zoom and navigating to settings. Under Other, click the plus sign next to Assign scheduling privilege to. Enter the email address of the person whom you’d like to schedule meetings on your behalf and click Assign.
  • Note: This only works if both users are licensed Zoom users within the University of Guelph or Guelph-Humber account. 

Starting a Meeting 

  • For lectures, to ensure the meeting launches correctly with you as the meeting host, we recommend starting meetings from the Zoom website rather than the CourseLink Zoom integration. This will require the organizational account username and password. 

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  • For labs and seminars run by TAs where the TA is responsible for the content of their session (i.e, creating polls in advance)we recommend starting meetings from the Zoom website. This will require the organizational account username and password. TAs can add poll questions to their lab or seminar by clicking on the name of the meeting to access the meeting management page.

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  • For labs and seminars run by TAs who do not require scheduling, breakout room pre-assign or poll creation features, you can consider providing your Host Key to those TAs, allowing them to claim the host permissions without you having to join the meeting. You can find your host key by signing into the Zoom website and navigating to the Profile page.
    • Note: This option requires join before host to be enabled and no waiting room. This is contrary to our regular security recommendations but is required for the Claim Host option to be available. This option should be used sparingly and may only be appropriate for sections where access to the join URL is restricted to students belonging to that section (i.e., using release conditions in Content, see above) 

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Sharing Recordings from Seminars & Labs 

If you are recording meetings shared through section-restricted content modules, these will not be accessible to students through the CourseLink Zoom integration.

  • To share this recording, navigate to the Zoom website and select the Recordings tab from the menu on the left side. 

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  • For the recording you wish to share, click on the Share… button to the right of the recording name. This will open a panel of recording sharing options.
  • Once happy with the sharing options, click on Copy sharing information to clipboard. This information can then be pasted into a file within the section-restricted content module.  

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