Tips for Hosts
Manage your Meeting
Before the meeting, update the meeting options to ensure that students and staff are secure.
Manage Your Participants
Allow only signed-in users to join
This feature can be useful when you want to control your guest list and invite only certain individuals (for example, students or colleagues). If someone tries to join the meeting who isn't signed in to their Acadia account, they will receive a notice indicating the meeting is open only to authorized attendees, and they will have the option to sign in with an authorized email address.
Mute participants
You can mute/unmute individual participants or all participants at once. This allows you to block unwanted, distracting, or inappropriate noise. To mute everyone, click Manage Participants and select Mute All. You can also enable Mute Upon Entry in your settings to keep noise at a minimum during large classes or meetings.
Tips for Meeting Attendees
- Mute your microphone
To help keep background noise to a minimum, make sure you mute your microphone when you are not speaking.
- Be mindful of background noise
When your microphone is not muted, avoid activities that could create additional noise, such as shuffling papers.
- Turn off your video
When your video is not off, avoid activities that could create a distraction. Select Blur your Background.
- Turn off incoming video
Spotty WiFi can be troublesome. When your incoming video is off, the meeting requires less bandwidth.
- Position your camera properly
If you choose to use a web camera, be sure it is in a stable position and focused at eye level, if possible. Doing so helps create a more direct sense of engagement with other participants.
- Use the app
For the best experience and most features, download the Microsoft Teams app instead of using the web interface. If you are using the web version, use Chrome or Edge as your browser if possible.
- Limit distractions
You can make it easier to focus on the meeting by turning off notifications, closing or minimizing running apps, and muting your smartphone.
- Avoid multi-tasking
You'll retain the discussion better if you refrain from replying to emails or text messages during the meeting and wait to work on that PowerPoint presentation until after the meeting ends.
- Prepare materials in advance
If you will be sharing content during the meeting, make sure you have the files and/or links ready to go before the meeting begins.
Additional Meeting Tips
- Use poll questions, and other apps (i.e. Kahoot, FligGrid, Quizlet) periodically to engage your audience and keep them focused.
- Monitor the chat function for questions as they come in, to see if people are expounding on something you covered, or to see if people are expressing poor understanding.
- Enable video only for the presenter. You can only see a limited number of participants anyway, depending on your screen size, and enabling video gobbles up network resources. If you plan to lecture without feedback (e.g., for a large seminar), you can also disable participant audio.
- Schedule one or more feedback breaks. In a physical classroom, you can see raised hands or observe confused looks. It’s important to assess understanding and allow students to ask questions. An audio free-for-all can be a nightmare, but dedicated Q&A periods work really well.
- Be patient and leave time for technical delay. Everyone is connecting with different devices. f participants are experiencing lagging or skipping, suggest that they use their computer to access video, while simultaneously dialing in by phone for the audio.
- Be prepared for "the worst case scenario". Things will go wrong. Have a contingency plan and communicate this to your students.