Video Conferencing

Carleton’s primary video conferencing solution is Google Meet. All students, faculty, and staff have access to Google Meet through their Carleton account.

In addition, Carleton offers a Basic Zoom account for all students, faculty, and staff and a limited pool of Zoom Pro licenses for the Carleton community members who require certain Zoom features for their work. If a Carleton community member requires an occasional Zoom Pro license (e.g., hosting a meeting with participants from China or other locations that do not allow Google Meet), they can check out a Pro license.
See a comparison of features.

Google Meet Features

Google Meet’s video conference capabilities include such features as easy scheduling of meetings through the Google calendar, waiting room, breakout room, chat, transcripts, recordings, captions, polling, virtual background and more. Explore the series of knowledge base articles on Google Meet Conferencing or watch some short videos to become familiar with some of the features.

Zoom and Zoom Checkout System

You can check out a Zoom Pro license for a period of 24 hours or 1 week. 

The Basic Zoom account associated with your Carleton email allows you to host an unlimited number of meetings that last up to 40 minutes with up to 100 participants, locally record and transcribe meetings, chat, 3 editable whiteboards, automated captions, screen sharing, breakout rooms, virtual background, a personal meeting ID, and other options. And you can join any longer Zoom meetings hosted by others.

Checking out a Pro License:

1. Check whether any licenses are available on the License Checkout Portal.
2. Click the Checkout 24 Hours or Checkout 1 Week button.
3. Wait up to 15 minutes for the license to be provisioned and propagated to your account. The License Checkout Portal page will refresh automatically when your Pro license is ready. 
4. Once the License Checkout Portal indicates your Pro license is Active, log out of all Zoom sessions and log back into Zoom to use the Pro license. 
   To log out of all Zoom sessions:
   – In the browser, go to carleton.zoom.us, go to Profile, scroll to find Where you’re logged in, click on Sign me out of all sessions.
   – In the desktop application, go to your profile in the top right corner, find Settings, find My Account, click on Sign me out of all sessions.

Returning a Pro License:

Your license can be returned either manually or automatically:

1. Manual: You can click theReturn License Now button on the License Checkout Portal page to return the license. Wait a few minutes for the license changes to propagate, and then log out and log back in to your Zoom account.
2. Automatic: If you haven’t yet returned your license manually, at 3am the night after your checkout period, the license will be returned to the pool automatically.

For more information, visit our knowledge base articles on Zoom Conferencing.

Google Meet, Zoom Basic, and Zoom Pro Comparison Chart

*Recordings and transcriptions in Google Meet are shared with meeting invitees automatically

Zoom Features

The following videos provide a starting point for using Zoom.