How to Schedule Zoom Meetings in Your Canvas Course

At a Glance

In this guide, you’ll learn how to schedule Zoom meetings in your Canvas course.

You may want to schedule and host meetings with your students via Zoom (e.g., Office hours). Before scheduling Zoom meetings through the Zoom integration in your Canvas course, be sure to review What is a Zoom Scheduling Host?

Anyone enrolled in your Canvas course (e.g. Students) can join these Zoom meetings directly from your Canvas site.

Schedule Additional Zoom Meetings

The Zoom Scheduling Host should complete the following steps when scheduling additional course meetings:

1. In your Canvas course, click Zoom in the Course Navigation Menu.
   
2. Click the Schedule a New Meeting button.
   
3. Enter the following information and/or select the following options for your meeting:
   • Topic: Your course number is pre-filled. Modify the title as needed.
     
   • Description (optional): Enter in an optional meeting description.
     
   • When: Select a date and time for your meeting. You can manually enter any time and press enter to select it. For example, you can enter 15 in the minutes field to schedule a time with a 15-minute increment.
     • Beware: It often defaults to PM
       
       
   • Duration: Choose the approximate duration of the meeting. This is only for scheduling purposes. The meeting will not end after this length of time.
     
   • Recurring Meeting (optional): Recurring meetings must be sequential. If there is a time that the date changes out of the sequence you should only add those classes that are in the recurring schedule and schedule the ‘outliers’ independently.
     • Select the Recurring Meeting checkbox.
       
     • Recurrence: Select how often you need the meeting to recur: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or No Fixed Time. Meetings can recur up to 50 times, so if you need more than 50 recurrences, use the No Fixed Time option.
       
     • End Date: Enter the date that your recurring meeting will end by.
       
   • Security:
     • Passcode: Enter a meeting passcode for additional security.
       • Note: When you share the meeting link, the passcode is automatically included.
       • Please refrain from sharing the link (and thus, the password) unless the recipient of the link is an invited guest who is entering the meeting outside of Canvas.
         
     • Waiting Room: Enable Waiting Room for the meeting if you’d like to control when participants join the meeting.
       • The Waiting Room feature allows the host to control when a participant joins the meeting. As the meeting host, you can admit attendees one by one, or hold all attendees in the Waiting Room and admit them all at once. You can send all participants to the Waiting Room when joining your meeting, or you can allow participants from your Zoom account and participants with specified domains to bypass the Waiting Room. As the host, you can also choose to automatically move participants to the Waiting Room while a meeting is in progress if you lose connection from the meeting.
       • Note: MIT-authenticated accounts will bypass the Waiting Room. Guests, however, do NOT bypass the Waiting Room for security purposes. If you want to change this behavior, visit your Zoom Settings Page. Under Security, find your Waiting Room Options. Click on Edit Options and choose Everyone will go to the waiting room.
         
       • To learn how to change Waiting Room settings, refer to Enabling and Customizing the Waiting Room.
     • Require Authentication to Join: Restrict access to the meeting so that only MIT users can join.
       
   • Meeting Options (optional):
     • Allow participants to join before start time: Allow participants to join the meeting without you or before you join.
       • We don’t recommend allowing participants to join before start time, especially if you’re recording the session.
         
     • Mute participants on entry: If join before host is not enabled, mute participants as they join the meeting. Participants can unmute themselves after joining the meeting.
       • We recommended enabling Mute participants on entry.
         
     • Breakout Room Pre-assign: Set up your breakout rooms before the meeting for quicker assignments.
       
     • Automatically record meeting: Select if you want to record On the local computer or In the cloud.
       • We recommended selecting In the cloud.
         
   • Advanced Options:
     • Add Alternative Host(s) by entering MIT e-mail address separated by a comma.
       • Alternative Hosts:
         • must have a MIT Zoom Accounts;
         • are generally TAs, Course Admins and other teaching faculty; and
         • can manage polls and breakout rooms during a meeting.
4. Click Save.