Video Meetings & Discussions

by Kimberly Glassman & Larry Zuares

Our dedicated Instructional Coaches of Pemberton have created this very informative and helpful tutorial on how to use Google Meet during this unique time of the 2019-2020 school year.  Hopefully, this tutorial will help you in facilitating your classroom activities and student instruction.

 

Table of Contents

1. About Google Meet
2. Schedule a video meeting (Video)
3. Join from a Calendar event
4. Join from Meet
5. Join with a meeting link URL
6. Collaborate during a video meeting
7. Stop and start recording (Video)
8. Stop Presenting
9. Send a chat message during a video meeting
10. Mute a participant's microphone
11. Recommended protocols
12. Quick Help: Hangouts Meet Quick Start Guide
13. Additional Support: Hangouts Meet Training and Support
14. Video Tutorial: How to Use Google Hangouts Meet by Sue Tranchina

 

About Google Meet

Google Meet (formerly Google Hangouts) can support video calls for up to 250 participants and live streaming for up to 100,000 people. Faculty can host video calls from their web browsers, invite students and/or parents to participate, screen share, and moderate either text or audio-based discussions.

 

Google Meet is limited in what you can do as the creator to moderate or control a meeting within the call itself. Because of this, it is vital that you establish clear protocols of engagement and participation etiquette in advance of the meeting.

 

As a general recommendation, students should be expected to join the meeting in presentable attire with their audio muted, preferably in a quiet location.

 

Faculty should also present from a quiet location without background noise.

 

Schedule a video meeting

1. Go to Google Calendar (calendar.google.com) and create an event.  Include a title, date and time.
2. Click Add guests and enter email addresses OR the name of a Google Classroom.
3. Click Add location or conferencing, then Add conferencing or Hangouts Meet.
4. Click Save.

 

Guests receive an email with the event information and a link to the video meeting.  Guests can forward the meeting link to other people.  If someone tries to join who was not invited to the Calendar event, a meeting participant from your organization must accept their request.

 

Join from a Calendar event

See your scheduled meetings in Calendar and quickly join a video meeting.

1. In Google Calendar (calendar.google.com), click the event you want to join.
2. Click Join Hangouts Meet and in the window that opens, click Join Now.
   

 

Join from Meet

In Meet, you can select a scheduled event or you can enter a code or nickname.

 

Select a scheduled event:

1. In a web browser, enter https://meet.google.com/.
2. Select the meeting from your list of scheduled events.
3. Click Join now.
   
   NOTE: Participants who join after the 5th do not chime and are automatically muted.

 

Enter a meeting code or nickname:

1. In a web browser, enter https://meet.google.com/.
2. Click Join or start a meeting.
3. Enter a meeting code or nickname.
   • The meeting code is the string of letters at the end of the meeting link.  You don't have to enter the hyphens.
   • A nickname is a meaningful phrase, such as "our-meeting".  Other people in your organization can join the same meeting if they use the same nickname.
   • Leave the field blank to start a new meeting with a new code.
4. Click Continue and then Join now.
   

 

Join with a meeting link URL

Sometimes there isn't enough time to schedule a meeting and book a room.  With Hangouts Meet, you can join an impromptu video meeting by clicking the meeting link URL sent to you in a text or email.

1. Click the meeting link sent to you in a chat message or email.
2. Follow the onscreen prompts to join the meeting.

 

Collaborate during a video meeting

 

Start and Stop a recording

1. Open Meet and start or join a meeting.
2. Click More > Record Meeting
3. Wait for recording to start
   Other participants are notified when the recording stops and starts
4. Click More  > Stop recording when you finish.
   The recording also stops when everyone leaves the meeting.
5. Click Stop recording again to verify.
6. Wait for the recording file to be generated and saved to the organizer's My Drive > Meet Recordings folder.  An email with the recording link is also sent to the meeting organizer and the person who started the recording.

 

Present screen during a meeting

1. Join a video meeting
2. In the bottom-right corner, select Present now.
3. Select Your entire screen or A window.
4. Select Share.
   If your camera is turned on, participants continue to see your video while you're presenting.

 

 

Stop Presenting

1. In the Meet window, click Stop Presenting.
2. In the bottom-right corner, you can click You are presenting > Stop Presenting.

 

Send a chat message during a video meeting.

1. Join a Meet video call.
2. Click Chat  (upper right corner).
3. Enter a text message and click the Send  icon.

 

Mute a participant's microphone

If you're experiencing feedback or background noise during a video meeting, you might want to mute other people's microphones.

To mute other people, next to the person's thumbnail, hover over their volume icon  and click Mute .

 

Tips

• For privacy reasons, you cannot unmute another person.  Ask the participant to unmute their audio.
• To mute or unmute yourself, at the bottom of the video window click Mute .
• Phone participants can press *6 to unmute their phone.
• Any participant can be muted, including people wh dial-in using a phone.

 

Dial-in Participants

• Phone participants always press *6 to mute or unmute their phone.
• If someone else mutes you, you can only unmute using *6 (this is different from the mute icon on the screen).

 

Recommended protocols

1. Lecture-Based Class: No participation necessary, screen-shared presentation (Slides)
   • Students should enter the call with audio and video muted and dressed in appropriate attire, in case video button toggles accidentally.
   • Faculty decides to screen share a specific window (Slides).
   • Faculty choice: How should text chat be used?  Be sure to communicate expectations ahead of time.
2. Lecture/Discussion Hybrid Class: Active participation required during discussion
   • Students should enter the call with audio and video muted and dressed in appropriate attire, in case the video button toggles accidentally.  Students will toggle audio and/or video on when appropriate.
   • Faculty decides on screen share/lecture format.  In this example, let's assume that the faculty lectures with screen share and leads the discussion with video.
   • Faculty determines whether students need both audio and video or just audio for active participation.  For smaller discussions, video adds a sense of personality to the discussion.  For larger discussions, video may be disorienting.
   • Faculty should state upfront whether or not they will permit students to screen share (and, if so, for what reasons).
     • Faculty needs to establish protocols for moderating discussion.
     • Unmoderated: Any student can speak up at any time.
     • Moderated: Faculty decides speaking order.
       • If video is used, students can raise their hands to be called on, like in live classroom.
       • If only audio is used, faculty can use the text chat as a way of seeing who wants to participate.  In this case it is important to designate a signal in chat that users can type to show faculty that they have something to contribute.
3. Lab/Workshop/Collaborative Session:
   • These sessions vary widely, and it is best to tailor expectations to exactly what you need out of the class.  This example session is considering one where all participants need to screen share and need to speak with one another.
   • Students should enter the call with audio muted.  Faculty should determine whether or not students should enter with video muted or on.  Regardless, participants should be dressed in appropriate attire, in case the video button toggles accidentally.
   • Students should screen share a selected window of the project they are working on.
   • Faculty can use text chat for either feedback between students or for determining speaking order.