Network Conferencing: Collaborating in Zoom

Steven J Zeil

Last modified: Jan 23, 2021
Contents:

In this course you will be working in teams, and your team members might not be able to meet with you in person. Although email, forums, and wikis can serve for much communication, there will be times when you need to talk “synchronously”

This is a mandatory exercise exploring options in network conferencing. It will count as an assignment in the course grades.

You will need a PC with a good internet connection, a microphone, and headphones for this exercise.

1 Between Four and Seven Days Before Your Recitation Section

  1. Navigate to your recitation section (not the lecture section)in Blackboard. In the “My Groups” area, you should see that you have been added to a “WebConference…” group. Enter your group’s Discussion Board.
    • If you are the first person here, create a new thread titled “Counting Off”. Post your @odu.edu email address.

    • Each subsequent person should reply to that post, adding their ODU email address. (“Reply” means reply to the original post, staying in the same thread – do not start a new thread.)

2 Between 72 and 48 Hours Before Your Recitation Section

  1. Return to your group’s discussion board in Blackboard.

    The instructor will have replied to that thread, giving each person there an assignment. Carry out your assignment.

2.1 Possible Assignments

2.1.1 Meeting

If your assignment is “Meeting” followed by a time, your task is to set up a meeting and invite your team and the instructor to it.

  1. Sign in to odu.zoom.us with your ODU Midas credentials.

  2. For the Topic, use “CS350 Group N meeting”, replacing N by the your Blackboard group number.

    For “When”, select the date of your recitation and your assigned starting time.

    Turn on “Video” for the Host and Participants.

    Under Meeting Options, select “Only authenticated users can join”. A drop-down list will appear. In there, select “@odu.edu Users Only”.

    Click “Save” to create that meeting.

  3. Click on “Meetings” on the left if necessary. Click on your newly scheduled meeting. Locate the “Invite Link” URL. You’ll need that shortly.

  4. Now you need to publicize your meeting. I find that one of the better ways to do this is via Google Calendar.

    Open a separate browser tab and navigate to calendar.google.com and log in with your ODU account.

    • If your browser is already logged in to Google services under a personal GMail account, you will need to sign out of that first or select “Change Account” if available.

    Click “Schedule a Meeting”.

  5. Navigate to the day of your recitation. Click on the time slot closest to the start of your recitation, dragging the box down to the scheduled end time of your recitation.

    A “New event” box will pop up. Click the “More Options” button to get to the detailed page.

  6. Complete the meeting setup by supplying the requested information.

     

    1. For the title of the Event, again use “CS350 Group N meeting”.

    2. Edit the start and end times to match your assigned time and the end of the recitation period.

    3. For the “Location”, copy and paste the “Invite Link” URL from your Zoom page.

    4. In the “Add guests” area, enter the ODU email addresses for each of your teammates (username@odu.edu) (get these from the group discussion board) and click add.

      • You may find that Calendar offers to auto-complete some of these for you.

      • Also add the instructor’s email, tj1kenne@odu.edu, to the invitation list.

        It’s important that you invite the instructor (and your teammates) via an @odu.edu email address, not an @cs.odu.edu or personal GMail account.

  7. Click “Save” when you are done. Invitations will be sent to all of the group. These will include the link allowing direct access to the conference.

2.1.2 Document

If your assignment was “document”, then

  1. Go to Google Drive, which you can select from the Google Apps button . Make sure that you are logged in with your @odu.edu credentials.

  2. Create a new Google Doc document. Copy and paste a few paragraphs from this web page into that document.

  3. Click in the title area and give your document a title. Include “CS350 document” and your group name/number from Blackboard in the title.

  4. Exit the document and return to the Drive directory page.

  5. Right-click on your new document/drawing and select “Share…”. Enter the email addresses of your group members with “Can Edit” permission.

    • Also add the instructor’s email, @oduemail@, to the shared list.

    • It’s important that you share via an @odu.edu email address, not an @cs.odu.edu or personal GMail account.

2.1.3 Diagram

If your assignment was “diagram”, then

  1. Go to Google Drive, which you can select from the Google Apps button . Make sure that you are logged in with your @odu.edu credentials.

  2. Create a new Google Doc document.

  3. Click in the title area and give your document/drawing a title. Include “CS350 diagram” and your group name/number from Blackboard in the title.

  4. In the “Add-Ons” menu, select “Get add-ons”. Search for “PlantUML Gizmo” and install it.

  5. In the “Add-Ons” menu, select “Plant-UML Gizmo”, “Start”.

  6. Add a few empty lines to your document, then position the cursor in the middle of them.

    In the Gizmo editor pane, select “Observer class structure”, then click Insert to place a diagram into your document.

  7. Exit the document and return to the Drive directory page.

  8. Right-click on your new document/drawing and select “Share…”. Enter the email addresses of your group members with “Can Edit” permission.

    • Also add the instructor’s email, @oduemail@, to the shared list.

    • It’s important that you share via an @odu.edu email address, not an @cs.odu.edu or personal GMail account.

3 Between 1 and 24 Hours Before Your Recitation Section

  1. Check your email. You should have at least one invitation to participate in a Zoom session, either one that you were assigned to host or one that was sent by a teammate.

  2. Log into your ODU email to be sure that your browser is logged in under your ODU account rather than any personal GMail/Google account that you might also have.

    • You may want to explicitly logout of your personal GMail account before logging into your ODU Account

  3. In a separate tab/window, check your Google calendar. You should see the event listed there.

  4. Links in the email and calendar entry will allow you to indicate whether you plan to attend. Click on one to indicate that you plan to attend.

  5. Go to Google Drive, which you can select from the Google Apps button . Make sure that you are logged in with your @odu.edu credentials.

    You should see at least one “CS350 document” and at least one “CS350 diagram” has been shared with you.

  6. Open one of the diagrams.

  7. Install the PlantUML Gizmo: In the “Add-Ons” menu, you may already see an option to install it. If not, select “Get add-ons”. Search for “PlantUML Gizmo” and install it.

4 At Least 15 Minutes Before Your Scheduled Meeting

  1. Again, log into your ODU email to be sure that your browser is logged in under your ODU account rather than any personal GMail/Google account that you might also have.

  2. Enter the meeting by using the Zoom link in the Location field of the invitation email or in the calendar entry.

  3. Wait for your group members to arrive.

  4. (Optional) If you have time before the meeting starts, you may start the After the Instructor Leaves portion of this exercise.

5 During Your Meeting

While you wait for the instructor,

  1. If you were the person who created this meeting (the “host”), look for the “Share Screen” button near the bottom of the meeting window. There should be a small caret (^) in the upper-right corner of the Share Screen button. Click on that and select “Advanced Sharing Options...”.
  1. Your instructor will join you briefly near the beginning of your scheduled session, just to check in and make sure everyone has made it.

6 After the Instructor Leaves

6.1 Screen Sharing

Practice screen sharing and get yourselves set up for future recitation discussions:

One by one, take turns doing the following:

  1. Use the “Share Screen” control to turn on screen sharing.

    • You will be given a choice of what to share: your entire screen or just selected windows.

    • If you are the first person to take a turn, share your entire screen.

    • If you are the second person to take a turn, share your web browser.

    • After the first two people have tried, the remainder may share either their entire screen or their web browser.

  2. Ask your team-mates to describe to you what they see from your PC. In particular, can they read the text in your window(s)?

    If you are sharing just your web browser window, try resizing the window at full-screen and to just half the screen height and width. Ask your teammates how this affects what they see.

  3. Right-click on a line in your web-browser to bring up a pop-up menu. Tell your team-mates what you have done and ask them to again describe to you what they see from your PC.

  4. Click on a menu in your web-browser to drop down a list of menu entries. Tell your team-mates what you have done and ask them to again describe to you what they see from your PC.

6.2 Document Sharing

  1. You should have at least one document shared with you in Google drive by a team member. Go to Google Drive, look in “Shared with me” (unless you are the creator of the document) and open that document (in a separate tab/window). Click somewhere in the document.

    As everyone opens the document, you should see “cursors” for each person. Everyone should add their name to the document. (Don’t wait to take turns – just move your cursor to a clear spot and type your name.)

    Once all the names are typed out, arrange them into a bulleted list near the top of the document.

    Notice how updates can be seen simultaneously at different locations.

    You can play around a bit with other edits, but leave the list of names intact.

    (You can do the same kind of thing with Google Drive shared documents outside of video calls as well. But the ability to edit simultaneously is particularly well suited to web conferences.)

6.3 Diagram Sharing

The PlantUML Gizmo allows you to work together on design diagrams.

Collaborating is not quite as smooth as in the basic Google Doc you just practiced with. The key elements to remember are:

Collaborating on single large document in this way would be awkward. But a large document with many small diagrams is quite manageable.

Working together, convert the initial diagram into this:

  1. Identify a single change to be made to get closer to your goal. Let one person announce that they are going to do it.

  2. That person should select the diagram, click Edit selected, carry out the change, and then click Insert to post the change to everyone else.

  3. Repeat the above two steps as necessary, with different people taking turns carrying out the changes.

Some notes on the required changes:

CS330 folks should recognize the components of these UML class diagrams. For the rest of you, we’ll have a quick look at what these actually mean later in the semester.

  1. Optional: if you have the time and the inclination, try this tool for doing UML diagrams collaboratively within Google drive.

    Draw.io handles collaboration more smoothly than the PlantUML, but there’s a lot of very basic UML stuff that is impossible or, at least, tricky to draw with it.

Leave your shared documents and diagrams in place until a grade has been posted for your participation in this recitation.