Parkland College is phasing out the use of  Zoom. As of January 1, 2022, instructors will need to use utilize Microsoft Teams instead of Zoom for synchronous class meetings with students. For instructions, please see: Cobra Learning: Creating Microsoft Teams in Cobra

The majority of Parkland employees should now be using Microsoft Teams instead of Zoom to schedule and host meetings: Microsoft Teams - Creating and Managing a Meeting

While Teams is the new standard, there are still some instances where Zoom is being used for hosting Parkland meetings. Please utilize the following questions and answers for guidance. 

Yes, all students and employees can sign into Zoom with a ParklandOne account and participate in a Parkland initiated meeting.To access your Parkland Zoom account, please navigate to https://go.parkland.edu/zoom and sign in with your ParklandOne username and password. This is a free account. Users do not need a paid licensed account to attend a Zoom meeting or webinar. 

The short answer is NO, but there are restrictions on the free non-licensed accounts that all Parkland employees and students have by default. 

• If your meeting is 40 minutes or less, you do NOT need a Zoom license and you can have up to 100 participants.
• If it is a 1 on 1 meeting (you and a single participant), the meeting time is not limited even if you do not have a license. Once you have 3-100 participants, however, the meeting will end at the 40 minute mark if you do not have a license assigned to your Parkland Zoom account. 

Moving forward, Parkland is not purchasing new Zoom licenses for employees. If business practices require a licensed Zoom account, please submit a Service Request regarding the exception.

A Webinar license allows some Parkland employees to host Zoom meetings with up to 500 participants. The first 100 can be interactive participants. The remaining 400 are non-interactive participants and anyone who joins after that can watch via live stream. These licenses are expensive, limited, and are already spoken for. If you need a webinar scheduled, than any existing Webinar license holder can schedule it for you, make you a co-host, and then you can start and conduct your webinar without the license holder needing to attend. Please note, however, that you will need to be a licensed Zoom user in order to be made a co-host. Currently the webinar licenses are held by Communications & External Affairs, Admissions & Records, Arts and Sciences, and Marketing. If any additional Webinar licenses need to be purchased, those licenses only allow for 100 interactive participants and 200 non-interactive for a total of 300 attendees. Webinar licenses allow for the following:

Yes, Marketing created a number of virtual backgrounds for your use. Please check them out here: https://www.parkland.edu/Main/About-Parkland/Newsroom/Virtual-Backgrounds

Users are encouraged to review the Zoom Help Center Documentation.  It is searchable and you may be able to find the answer to your question with a simple search.