Welcome to COMP34120!
Lectures, problem sessions, and labs will be run via Zoom. Zoom is an audio and video conferencing software which is widely adopted within the university for online teaching.The problem sessions and the labs will use “breakout rooms” in Zoom. In order to use breakout rooms, all of you need to be on the University’s Zoom account, and you all need to join these sessions using the desktop client or the mobile app (not the browser version), which you will need to install. That is why these extra instructions are needed.
Some of you were put on the University’s account manually by Media Services in early September. For the rest of you, there is a new procedure - you may have read about it in the student newsletter. You need to go to www.zoom.us and sign up using your University email address (name@student.manchester.ac.uk). If you are already signed up, it should take you to your account. Otherwise, this will automatically put you under the University’s licence package. The good folks in Media Services will then authorise your account. So if you sign up during working hours, it should take only a couple of hours for this to be finalised. I need you to do this by the end of the first week of term (Friday, October 9, 2020).
Zoom is available for most desktop platforms, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and Linux (although distribution support may vary). You should download the latest version from https://zoom.us/download.
A web version which requires no installation and runs in your browser is available, but wherever possible we recommend downloading and installing the full version. Likewise, wherever possible we recommend using the desktop rather than mobile version.
Zoom also offers phone “dial-in”, but please do not use that as you will not be able to see any visual material which we present.
You will be provided with a meeting ID and zoom link to join lectures. The timetable is available on Blackboard, and the meeting ID is provided for each event you should join.
Course calendar:
Upon joining, you will be automatically “muted”. (Ie: Other people cannot hear sound from you.) This is important as there are hundreds of participants connected simultaneously. Please do not unmute yourself unnecessarily.
Please note lectures are recorded, so if you do unmute yourself at some point (Eg: To ask a question) be aware that this will become part of the course material available on blackboard.
Labs and problem sessions will also be carried out via Zoom, and meeting links provided in the Blackboard timetable.
You will be by default assigned to a “breakout room” together with other members of your team. It is important you use your university zoom account and not your personal one, or the system won’t be able to allocate you.
A breakout room is essentially a “side-meeting” restricted to members of your team. Chats and file sharing do not leave the breakout room.
The lecturer(s) and Teaching Assistants may move between rooms to assist. Please do not do so yourselves as that would be disruptive to other students.
If you require help from a TA, please use the ‘request assistance’ button. Note there are many of you and few of us, so there might be a virtual queue just as there would be in a lab!
Breakout rooms are not recorded, so you will be responsible for making your own notes as a team.