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How to Have a Zoom Meeting That Is (Almost) as Good as Being There

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These tips were originally developed by the UCSF Program Management Office (PMO). They have been expanded by IT.

Tips for hosts of meetings

Set expectations ahead of time
Let participants know ahead of time if your expectation is for them to be joining by video or if audio-only is fine.
Get participants engaged during the meeting
Be mindful of who's spoken and who has not, and call on people to ensure that everyone is participating equally.

Turn on your camera
Turning on your camera can help encourage others to do the same, and it helps boost meeting engagement as a result.
Wear headphones
Wearing headphones improves your own experience of hearing others in the meeting, and it also improves the experience for everyone else. This is because it prevents feedback and echoing that can occur when participants must continually mute and unmute their microphones.
Be mindful of ambient noise
Keep your microphone on mute if you aren't talking. Be aware that noises that may seem quiet to you might sound much louder to those joining the meeting remotely.

Use Zoom tools for more robust and engaged participation
Whiteboards can be used for brainstorming and grouping ideas. If you haven’t used Zoom’s whiteboard feature before, check out the Zoom whiteboard guide. Zoom also has a helpful tutorial on the whiteboard annotation tools.
Orient people to the tools you’ll be using
Spend time at the beginning of the meeting to orient everyone to any tools being used (e.g., Screen sharing or writing on whiteboards) during the call.
Harness the power of group work
For meetings with more than five participants, group work can be more engaging and effective, as it allows groups to tackle different challenges before returning to the group to share what they have accomplished.
Organize breakout groups ahead of time
Zoom allows you to presort participants into breakout rooms. Review Zoom’s guide to Pre-assigning participants to breakout rooms for insight into using breakout rooms and watch this video for best practices for running breakout rooms in Zoom.
Check and adjust
It is a good end-of-meeting best practice to reflect on what went well and what could have gone better. Set aside the last five minutes of a meeting to check in with participants and get their feedback.