Whether you’re being “Zoom bombed” or simply have a student who is being extremely disruptive, knowing how to secure your online sessions and remove disruptors can be a big help. Here, we’ll show you how to lock down your course rooms, remove participants who aren’t following course guidelines, and generally avoid the headache of unwanted interruptions and interlopers from outside the College.
Before a Meeting
You may never need to deal with any kind of disruptions in your courses, but it’s better to be prepared just in case. Here are some things you can do ahead of time to reduce the chances of security issues or other disruptions.
Set a Code of Conduct
One thing that can be useful before these situations occur is to lay out an expected code of conduct for students in your courses when they’re in the online classroom. You can simply link to the College Student Code of Conduct or lay out your own more specific rules for participation and engagement with other students.
Secure Your Meeting
There are a couple of ways that you can help ensure that your course room stays as secure as possible:
- Lock the Course Room: Locking the course room will make it so that students cannot log in to the room if they are not already inside. This is one way you can eject a student from your course without fear that they will simply come back in. It also allows you to close rooms that are not in use, reducing student confusion if you have more than one room in your course. Locking the Collaborate Ultra Course Room
- Disable Guest Access: In the Collaborate Ultra session editing screen, uncheck the Guest Access box. This will disallow any guest links to your meeting room. Managing Guest Access
- Only have students join through the course: Rather than sharing links to your course meetings, have students enter the course room directly from the Blackboard course section. This eliminates the need for links, which can fall into the wrong hands, and ensures only those with access to your course can access the session. If this doesn’t work for you for whatever reason, you can manage invitations to the meeting through the Session Settings.
Once a Session Has Started
After a Collaborate Ultra session has started, meeting moderators stop many disruptive behaviors by:
Locking Participants’ Audio, Video, and Chat Settings
Have a student or unwanted participant causing issues in your session? Limit what they can do by turning off their access to any form of communication in the course. This will give you a minute to determine what needs to be done or to remove them from the session altogether. Keep in mind that this silences ALL participants, not just the disruptive one, so it is a temporary solution. However, you can individually mute a student by clicking on their icon in the Attendees Panel and selecting Mute.
Removing Participants from the Session
If you need to remove an attendee from your session, this can easily be done through the Attendees Panel. Use the instructions below:
Monitoring the Attendees Panel
It’s a good idea to keep an eye on the Attendees panel while you’re in a Collaborate session. If you see a name you don’t recognize, you can contact that participant for more information.
Hopefully you’ll never need to use these tips and tools, but we hope this will help you to be prepared just in case. For additional information or support, you can contact us at learningtech@cod.edu.
