Online-Meetings with Zoom

Zoom Quickstart

If you want to log in with the licensed account of the University of Bern for the first time or if you want to log in to Zoom for the first time at all, you will find a quick guide for the most important steps here:

Quick start zoom (PDF)

Webinar or meeting?

Are you planning an event with many participants? Are you looking for a suitable setting? Here you will find a decision-making aid, a brief characteristic of the different event forms, and instructions on what to consider when applying to set up a webinar.

Webinar - Entscheidungshilfe (PDF), only in German

Record and make Zoom meetings available

Here you will find instructions on how to record courses held as Zoom meetings, download them and make them available directly on Zoom or better via ILIAS-Opencast.

Zoom recordings (PDF)

Zoom breakout rooms

Would you like to divide your participants into smaller working groups and reassemble them in one session? Here you will learn how to divide the group into subgroups either quickly and easily during the meeting or planned with a pre-selected group composition:

Zoom Breakout-Räume (PDF), only in German

What is OnZoom?

OnZoom is a marketplace for events, presentations and courses, where in particular companies and private individuals offer paid participation on various topics (cooking, sports, etc.). This platform is not connected to the Zoom account of the University of Bern. If you would like to hold a paid and/or simultaneous event (e.g. parallel sections at conferences). For this purpose a Zoom Events license is available. Please contact zoom@unibe.ch if you are interested.

Can I get a webinar license?

Note that a webinar is less interactive and more anonymous. Webinars are primarily intended for large, anonymous events with 300-500 people, where it doesn't make sense to make a podcast recording. In this case, you can request a temporary webinar license. Contact Zoom Support for an appropriate request: zoom@unibe.ch

If you do not expect more than 300 people attending at the same time, we recommend setting up a regular meeting and not a webinar. Meetings can also be attended by many (up to 300) people and you can fully manage it yourself, which is not the case with the webinar in the University of Bern license model. See the decision aid for more options and information: Entscheidungshilfe Webinar und Umsetzung (PDF), only in German

How many participants can attend an event?

For its members the University of Bern has licensed Zoom in a version, that allows a capacity of up to 300 participants per meeting. If you expect more than 300 (inter)active participants, you can request a "webinar" (up to 500 participants). Please contact zoom@unibe.ch.

Can I use Zoom for exam proctoring?

Zoom can be used for proctoring an exam when the pandemic requires remote exams or when a remote exam has been approved. In these cases, Zoom can assist with proctoring. There are several options for meeting settings: depending on group size, breakout rooms or the so-called "focus mode" are suitable; recording is not allowed with these settings. Thus, Zoom is another tool that can be used for monitoring remote exams, especially when used in combination with other options such as multiple exam papers (e.g. group A, group B), randomized answer options, plagiarism detection for short answer or essay questions and an exam declaration.

Can someone else be presenter at my event?

Guests can be invited and granted presentation rights by the organizer or the Co-host in Zoom.

To enable the transfer of presentation rights in general, screen sharing for guests must not be disabled (this is the default setting). The setting can be found in your personal profile under Settings -> in Meeting (Basics) -> "Turn off screen sharing when guests are in the meeting". Using the default setting, you can set in each running meeting whether the participants are allowed to present ("Security" button). In addition, you can designate someone (via "Participants") as co-host or also transfer the host function to someone. You can then also leave the meeting yourself without ending it for the others and e.g. the guest can take over the host role.

Can someone else start my meeting if I am unable to attend?

You can define so-called "alternative moderators" who can then start a meeting and lead it as (co-)host. Only persons with a campus account of the University of Bern can be registered.
If you want to register a person with a campus account of the University of Bern, you can do this in the settings of the respective meeting on the website. If you can't find a person yet, it's probably because they were not yet logged in with the campus account and so are not yet listed in Zoom. Ask the person to log in to the unibe-ch.zoom.us site via SSO at least once. If you still can't find the person, try to enter the name with the following syntax: <firstname.lastname>@unibe.ch (staff) or <firstname.lastname>@students.unibe.ch (students).

How can people who are not from the University of Bern host a meeting for the University of Bern?

Only people who have a campus account of the University of Bern can be entered as alternative hosts in a meeting. But there are the following possibilities how external persons can get access as host, if they should host an existing meeting for the University (e.g. short term substitution in a meeting series):

Solution 1: Find someone who has a campus account, enter that person as an alternative moderator. The person logs in at the beginning of the meeting and gives the external speaker host privileges in the meeting itself, then he/she can leave the meeting and the external speaker is host.
Solution 2: The meeting is set up so that the meeting can also be entered "before the presenter" (checkbox at the meeting itself) and that everyone can do screen sharing (in Zoom's browser dashboard: Settings --> screen sharing, but this should be possible by default). Then the external speaker can enter the meeting and present at any time, but cannot act as a "real" host and thus does not have some of the host functions (e.g. mute everyone at the same time or kick someone out).

My campus account is not working

There are two main ways you can log in to Zoom on your licensed Campus account. Depending on the error, please try the other method once:

1. using the website
a) visit unibe-ch.zoom.us 
b) click on SIGN IN
c) log in using your account in the following form: firstname.lastname@unibe.ch an (employees), firstname.lastname@students.unibe.ch (students).

2. using the application: 
a) start the zoom app
b) click on "log in"
c) click on "log in with SSO"
d) enter unibe-ch (.zoom.us) as the company domain and click "continue"
e) Log in using your account in the following form: vorname.nachname@unibe.ch an (employees), vorname.nachname@students.unibe.ch (students).

How can I switch to another SSO account? Although I logged out, Zoom starts again with the same account.

The browser stores cookies concerning the Zoom app. This means that you stay logged in via Single-Sign-On until you have logged out everywhere. It is not always visible which login is still active. 
Solution:

1. First you log out of the app (click on your profile in the upper right corner and then "log out").
2. Go to unibe-ch.zoom.us in your browser and also log out by clicking on your profile and choosing "log out" (Please note: it can be irritating that after the click on "sign in" in your browser you are automatically logged in with your first account)
3. Close your Browser and open unibe-ch.zoom.us again.
4. Now you can log in to a new account by using your user name and password.

My zoom meeting stops after 40min. What can I do?

Probably you have used a basic account. Log in to unibe-ch.zoom.us with your campus account to get the premium version.

Why is my pre-approval request for a Zoom app rejected?

The central decision that Zoom apps are currently not activated at the University of Bern was made on the basis of a series of considerations:

• All participants in a meeting would have to install the app addon. 
• Participants from mobile devices would be partially excluded and in the worst case would not even be able to call up the meeting.
• Participants from the browser would also be partially excluded
• Each App has its own security policies, which results in privacy issues (data collection).
• Meetings can be disrupted if anyone can access an app in a meeting.
• Each installed app is a potential source of issues (installation or application errors, performance, blocking of the entire application,..), --> excessive support effort
• The available apps are only partly free of charge
• For every single app it would have to be checked to what extent it could be approved (there are no resources for such clarifications)
• App usage is not as easy as Zoom advertises: one click is often not enough. Installations and restarts are required, which is sometimes only possible with administrator rights. 

Therefore, no apps can be activated in the licensed version of the University of Bern. 
Note: The “Zoom Timer App” function is already integrated and can be used without installing apps. To use the function, select View > Show meeting timer in the meeting > click on the time display and select the function “Timer app”.

The press says that Zoom handles data carelessly. Should I be worried?

Zoom has been attacked many times in the past and has responded quite quickly each time. For example, the privacy statement revised on 08/11/2023 says: "Zoom does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments or other communications-like Customer Content (such as poll results, whiteboard and reactions) to train Zoom or third-party artificial intelligence models."

• The University of Bern obtained the Zoom licenses via a framework agreement from SWITCH. This agreement includes the Global Data Processing Addendum (PDF), which confirms that the Zoom license used at the University of Bern is compliant with the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) (Website).
• Furthermore, it is ensured that the data, which must be stored,  is located on servers in Europe.
• The attention tracking feature, which has also been criticized and can be used by lecturers to monitor participants, has been switched off by default and cannot be activated in the Zoom license of the University of Bern. In the meantime, the feature has been removed from Zoom in general.

Please make sure to observe data protection and copyright in your courses too. Do not discuss or share any data that is particularly sensitive. This also applies to other video conferencing systems, such as Teams.

What do I need to consider about Online-Meetings?

Copyright and citation law:

• If you show works (images, texts, etc.) from other authors in your meetings  or online-lectures, indicate the source of the works, especially of works from the Internet.
• Participants must be made aware that they may use the link to the recording only for their personal use, to not pass it on, to not put them on the Internet, to not exploit them commercially.

Personal Data Protection:

• Refrain using information about clearly identified or contextually identifiable persons, e.g. photo & film recordings of students, patients, etc., unless the persons concerned have expressly consented to publication by you for this purpose.
• If you want to record a meeting and make it available afterwards, make sure no participants are recognizable, apart from you as lecturer (the students can e.g. switch off their webcams or you can set the zoom settings so that only the slides are recorded. If question and discussion sessions are recorded, inform all participants in advance and obtain their express consent.

For data processing in general, please also note the directives Data protection in the IT area of the University of Bern (PDF), only in German of 20.08.2019.

Please contact the center of ICT-supported teaching (iLUB)  for further assistance.