Staff Notices

The current COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed the way we learn and work and inadvertently created greater dependence on collaborations tools. In our university setting, and even prior to COVID-19, Zoom has had huge popularity as one of our video conferencing tools of choice.

Today, Zoom is being widely used across our regional university-system to support virtual meetings and teaching. We have prepared some tips and resources to ensure a positive experience for all participants, help you stay cybersafe and show your Pelican Pride online:

Guidelines for Hosting Zoom Meetings, available here.

Zoom’s Virtual Background feature allows you to display an image or video as your background during a Zoom Meeting. We have prepared UWI St. Augustine Zoom Backgrounds for your use: Option 1 | Option 2 | Option 3 (bolded words are hyperlinked).

Cyber Safety

Unfortunately, Zoom’s current popularity has also made it a target for hackers, termed Zoom bombers. These hackers exploit security vulnerabilities to enter private video conferencing meetings and troll, cause disruptions, steal confidential company data and even commit corporate espionage.

Around the globe, cyber security experts are seeing increasing incidents of Zoom bombing—instances when random people ‘bomb’ or crash a zoom team meeting. In a more localised case, recently, one of our own university events was compromised by this type of malicious intrusion.

Zoom has many features to ensure privacy and security of meetings, but these security and privacy settings must be enabled at the individual user level for your meeting to be protected. Follow the Zoom Videoconferencing Guide available here to enable these features.

Resources from Zoom

The Zoom Resource Center at https://zoom.us/resources remains a key resource as the platform is consistently undergoing updates. The Center has quick how-to videos on anything and everything Zoom. 

We hope that you find these resources useful.