Best Practices: Hybrid Meetings With Zoom

While many BU faculty, staff, and students are returning to campus, for many, collaborative, team-based hybrid meetings (a combination of in-person and remote participants) are an appealing option. In this guide, we provide a framework for hosting successful hybrid meetings in Zoom. We offer some key terms, an example setup, and highlight settings and etiquette for presenters, in-person attendees, and remote attendees. We conclude with some further resources to explore to get the most out of your hybrid meetings.

Please note: This guide presumes a typical room setup with some sort of projector or screen, one computer (whether desktop or laptop) connected to said screen, and participants (remote and in person) all logged into Zoom. Also, our example setup is one model for hosting hybrid meetings. It may not exactly fit your groups’ needs, but hopefully it provides you with a model and shared terminology that you can use to adapt your specific setup.

Getting Started with Zoom

Terminology:

  • Presenter View: This is the view from the presenter’s computer screen. This can mirror either the Room View or the Zoom View, depending on your preferences
  • Room View: This refers to whatever is displayed on the projector screen.
  • Zoom View: This refers to the Zoom meeting view, typically viewing a shared screen or the speaker/gallery view of participants in Zoom.

The Setup

The Presenter View is the Zoom meeting, which includes any shared screen content. This presenter view in this case is identical to the Zoom view, which is shared via the zoom meeting to all attendees. The Room View, on the projector screen, would then be a speaker or gallery view of all Zoom attendees.

In order to do this, the presenter will need to turn off the option to Mirror Displays in your computer options. To do so, follow these steps:

PC:

  1. Open your Display settings via the Control Panel or by right-clicking the desktop and choosing Screen Resolution.
  2. In the Multiple Displays dropdown, select Extend desktop to this display.

Mac:

  1. Open System Preferences.
  2. Select Displays.
  3. Select Arrangement.
  4. Uncheck Mirror Displays.

Note: If you do not want to display the Zoom Participants on the Projector, you could always switch the views where the Presenter View is zoom participants and chat, and both the Projector View and the Zoom View is the shared screen content.

For Presenters

Presenters should be connected to the projector and to the room audio, if applicable. The presenter does not necessarily need to be the one actually presenting for the meeting, this just refers to the person who is managing and sharing the meeting content to the in person and remote attendees.

Setup:

  1. Connect to Projector and room audio
  2. Turn off screen mirroring
  3. The presenter should ideally be the one hosting the Zoom Meeting and sharing the presentation materials. Start screen share in Zoom when ready.
  4. Arrange displays so that Presenter/Zoom view is on the computer screen and the view of the participants is on the Projector screen
  5. Rearrange gallery view of participants on Projector screen to prioritize the videos of remote participants.

If you need to share audio or video from your computer, make sure to share computer sound during screen share and consider optimizing for video.

For In-person Attendees

In-person attendees should be logged into the zoom meeting so that they can also view shared screen content. Their audio should be muted and their speakers should be muted to avoid echo. Video can be on or off depending on personal preference.

To make sure Remote Attendees are included, it is recommended to adopt one of the following approaches:

  1. Zoom Moderator: Appoint a single Zoom Moderator whose role is to monitor chat and raised hands (in the Participants tab) for questions or participation from remote attendees in Zoom. The Zoom Moderator would mention or signal when there remote attendees have questions or would like to speak.
  2. Avatar Approach: Depending on the size of the meeting and the number of remote vs. in-person attendees, you could assign one or a couple of remote attendees to your in-person attendees. The in-person attendees serve as avatars for the remote attendees. Each in-person attendees would be responsible for moderating and keeping track of the chat and raised hands for only their assigned remote attendee(s). This helps make sure each in-person attendees is interacting with the remote attendees directly.

For Remote Attendees

Remote attendees should be logged into the zoom meeting so that they can view the shared screen content and see in-person attendees. Remote attendees should remain muted when not speaking and be encouraged to keep their cameras on so that they can be seen on the room projector by in-person attendees.

Remote attendees are encouraged to participate in chat, to use nonverbal communication within Zoom, and/or raise their hands when they wish to speak. A Zoom Moderator or assigned Avatars (see above) would pay attention remote participants’ participation in zoom. When called on to speak, remote attendees should unmute.

Additional Resources

David DeCampAbout the Author: Dave DeCamp, Senior Educational Technologist

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