Zoom is a cloud-based video communications app that allows TU students, faculty and staff to set up virtual video and audio conferencing, webinars, live chats, screen-sharing and other collaborative capabilities.
Zoom is a cloud-based video communications app that allows TU students, faculty and staff to set up virtual video and audio conferencing, webinars, live chats, screen-sharing and other collaborative capabilities.
The first time using your TU Zoom account follow these quick steps:
Options for future Zoom access
If you’re in the Waiting Room of a TU Zoom session, you most likely aren’t logged in with your TU account. Logout and log back in securely following these directions (PDF).
Towson University holds an enterprise account for Zoom. Using TU’s account allows us to provide the features of the Zoom video service while helping to protect you, and our data when teaching and conducting business.
Additionally, the TU Zoom enterprise account offers additional account privileges that a basic/unlicensed account does not. This includes a 24 hour meeting window, which means meetings can be held for longer than 40 minutes.
To get up and running in Zoom follow the steps below to activate your account, then download the Zoom client (app) to your desktop.
Go to zoom.towson.edu, click Sign In.
If your existing Zoom account is tied to your TU email, follow these steps to join TU’s account for the first time:
Personal or paid accounts might receive additional emails and may experience a short delay in joining TU’s environment. Customized settings and special additional features, like Zoom Video conferencing for telehealth, could be lost when joining TU's account, so contact the OTS Faculty/Staff Help Center for guidance.
Using your TU Zoom account to conduct TU business, versus an account tied to a personal email, helps protect TU's information — and yours. Read and follow TU’s Zoom security guidelines for configurations to see how to protect confidential data during a meeting.
Promote your meeting securely, especially on social media. Turn off “Embed passcode in invite link for one-click join” and use pre-registration so you can send an email with a link and passcode to those who register. Require a passcode and set Personal Meeting ID (PMI) to “All meeting.”
Watch this video. Zoom 101: Securing your meetings & virtual classrooms
Please note: This service is cloud hosted and updates are not controlled by Towson University. Towson University documentation for the service is reviewed quarterly to bring it into alignment with the most recent version of the service or software.
Some of the links below take you directly to Zoom support resources. If the article instructs you to sign into zoom.us, choose Sign in with SSO and type towson-edu as the company domain.
Students should contact Student Computing Services. Faculty/Staff should contact the OTS Faculty/Staff Help Center at 410-704-5151 or submit a TechHelp ticket for assistance using this request type: Employee > Collaboration, Video Conferencing, etc. > Zoom.
No, not without prior consent. Such activity is a violation of student privacy and FERPA guidelines. Because electronic platforms are able to show photos and list students' names, we are not permitted to take photos of the screen and post that photo on social media or anywhere else without participant permission. See the “Instructional Lecture Capture Guidelines and Release Form” section on this page if you’re thinking about recording or taking a screenshot during your session.
Zoom bombing or raiding is an unwanted, disruptive intrusion, generally by Internet trolls and hackers, into a video conference call that jeopardizes privacy concerns. Follow the “Security Tips” on this page to help prevent that.
Yes. Here's how to force a Zoom Waiting Room:
Go to Zoom.towson.edu>Click Sign In>Click Settings>Under Waiting Room Options, click Edit Options>Select Everyone>Click Continue.
Here’s the breakdown of meeting security options you can choose, based on types of invitees:
Faculty and staff who intend to use instructional lecture capture resources supported by Towson University are to adhere to the Instructional Lecture Capture Guidelines to ensure the FERPA regulations are not violated.
If a faculty/staff member intends to reuse recordings where the image, voice or materials of students are captured, the Instructional Lecture Capture Release Form must be used. *Be sure to read the guidelines (above) first.