Sharing From Campus To Zoom

In a hybrid or hyflex course that is in a HELIX Classroom or that is live streaming from a campus room to online students, we ask the classroom lecturer to screen share their slides and other computer content to Zoom, the same way they would if they were teaching in a web conference class. 

In addition to allowing the online students to see the content clearly during the class meeting, this also allows us to make a high quality recording of the screen content in addition to the recording from the camera(s) in the classroom. This direct recording will be more crisp and have better color accuracy than a camera aimed at the classroom projection screen would.

When the recording is ingested to our OpenCast video hosting system, the screen share recording is shown side by side with the camera recording, in two windows that students can adjust larger or smaller depending which content they need at a given time. 

If you are in one of DCE Extension School’s “HELIX Classroom” spaces, the DCE AV team will assist you in setting up your screen share into the HELIX system.

If you are live streaming from one of the other buildings on the Harvard campus, you will open your class’ DCE Canvas site and go to the “Zoom” tab to open Gather. Use the “Class: Live Stream” event link to join the stream, and screen share as you would any other Zoom class you were teaching. 

Join the Zoom session without joining computer audio to avoid AV problems in the classroom, meaning close the “audio conference options” popup window when you first launch the session without clicking an audio source. You can leave your camera off also since that will be taken care of by the videographer.

You may need your class videographer to launch the live stream for you before you can join, due to webinar licensing, and to make you a host or co-host of the session to enable screen sharing. 

You should receive in your email a printable PDF of the most current click-by-click instructions with screen shots a few days before each semester begins. If you do not find it, contact production @dce.harvard.edu

This helps avoid audio problems in the classroom such as feedback, or your computer’s program audio not routing through the classroom speakers when you play a video.

Your videographer is already feeding your voice into the live stream or HELIX, so you do not need to also use the microphone in your computer in order to be heard. If your computer’s mic is on as well, it could pick up the same audio as your videographer’s microphone and cause a distracting echo, or even loud feedback online or in the room. 

For your computer program audio, it can only be fed into Zoom or into the classroom speakers, but not both. You need to join the Zoom session without computer audio or students in the campus room will not hear anything. For the online students, your videographer will capture the sound from the campus room another way. Sometimes they can get an AV feed of the audio from a wall panel, but where this is not possible, they will use an additional microphone to capture the playback sound. 

I don’t have permission to screen share in the Zoom session

If you are not host, cohost, or panelist when you join your live stream Zoom, ask your classroom videographer or HELIX technician to promote you in the Zoom meeting so that you can screen share.

I can’t find my “Class: Live Stream” link on the Canvas site

Make sure you are looking on the Canvas site for the DCE offering of your course. If you kept your DCE and College sites separate, your live stream link will not be on the College site where students who are intended to be there in person would find it.

I clicked “Join” on the live stream event but it won’t let me in, or says the Zoom webinar has not started

Your Zoom account probably doesn’t have a webinar license associated, so you will need your classroom videographer to launch the session before you will be able to join. Once the Zoom session is launched, you will likely need the videographer to promote you in Zoom so that you can screen share.

If you are attempting to teach from home using the “Class: Live Stream” link, you will probably not be able to launch the class. Instead, please use the “Class (in case of emergency)” link that we created for you, usually listed in Gather just below the regular live stream link. The emergency link will be under your control to teach your class fully online without staff assistance.  

My campus students can’t hear my computer sound to play videos or music.

You probably joined Zoom with your computer audio, which means it can’t also be sent to the classroom speakers. Leave the Zoom meeting completely, and then rejoin it again from your Canvas site, without computer audio.

Note that this setting is when you first join the Zoom session, not the option when you go to screen share later:

If you do not see the first popup above when you join, you probably have the setting turned on in your desktop client that defaults to joining with computer audio. To find this setting, see Zoom help: Automatically joining meetings with computer audio

We are still having echo or feedback in Zoom.

Follow the steps above to leave the Zoom session, and rejoin from Canvas without computer audio.

You can also make sure that your own computer mic is muted, and that you have unchecked “Share sound” when you screen share.