Education

7 Benefits of Upgrading to a Zoom Education Plan

As you implement long-term strategies to support hybrid learning, here are seven benefits you need to know about the Zoom Education plan.
4 min read

Updated on January 05, 2023

Published on July 23, 2021

Upgrading to a Zoom Education Plan

If you’re part of an academic institution, a Zoom Education plan can help you get the most out of Zoom for teaching, learning, and connecting. A Zoom Education plan offers features that can make administrators’ lives easier, help educators enhance instruction and create a more secure, seamless learning environment for students.

As you implement long-term strategies to support hybrid learning, here are seven benefits you need to know about the Zoom Education plan:

1. Integrate seamlessly with your LMS

Zoom integrates with a number of leading learning management systems (LMS) through LTI Pro and other apps. This means educators can seamlessly schedule and start meetings directly within Blackboard, Canvas, Clever, Desire2Learn, Moodle, Schoology, and other LMS platforms, and students can join a Zoom class from the same LMS they use every day.

If you’re not using an LMS listed above, don’t worry! Zoom’s developer solutions, like APIs and webhooks, allow you to customize Zoom to your institution’s needs — read about how Cobb County School District integrated Zoom into its custom LMS for a seamless teaching and learning experience.

2. Enhance security with Single Sign-On (SSO) & external authentication

Single Sign-On, or SSO, allows faculty, staff, and students to log in one time, under one set of credentials, to get access to the applications, data, and services they need. External authentication adds an extra layer of security. With external authentication, anyone joining Zoom classes hosted by your institution’s licensed account needs to be an authenticated user — for example, logged in with an email address associated with your school’s domain. This allows students under 16 to join class sessions safely and securely.

You can learn more about the benefits of SSO for the classroom and external authentication on our blog.

3. Easily manage users & customize account settings

With a Zoom Education license, account owners and administrators have enhanced user management capabilities. You can add, delete, assign roles and add-on features, and add users to groups with different settings for each group. You’ll also get access to the Zoom Admin Portal, where you can manage all users in your company on one account for simplified billing and comprehensive usage insights.

4. Get access to the Zoom Dashboard for data & reports

The Zoom Dashboard provides administrators a top-level view of Zoom usage across your organization. You can see the total number of meetings being held in real time, how often features like screen sharing and recording are used, and even get real-time reports on connection quality. You can also get quick statistics on users or pull graphs on things like usage, meeting trends, and more. The live usage dashboard also enables Zoom administrators to join meetings seamlessly to audit a class or provide IT help.

5. Record to the cloud

Zoom Education accounts give you the ability to record class sessions directly to the Zoom cloud, where they can be downloaded or streamed from a browser. You’ll also get 0.5 GB of cloud storage with each license. We even have integrations that help schools manage their Zoom recordings.

6. Use advanced features & capabilities 

Some popular features and capabilities, such as polling, recording transcripts, and the ability to assign co-hosts to a meeting, are only available for licensed accounts. You can also create a more customized experience for your campus community by using a vanity URL (which is needed to set up SSO) and branding it with your institution’s logo and colors.

7. Leverage the entire Zoom platform 

Zoom Phone, Zoom Rooms, and Zoom Webinars are like building blocks for designing your campus communications ecosystem. You can add any of these services on to your Zoom Education plan to leverage more of the Zoom platform:

Zoom Phone for voice communications

A modern, cloud-based phone system like Zoom Phone allows faculty and staff to make and receive calls with their business phone number without being tied to their desk phone. You can also set up call queues and call delegation, send SMS text messages, and elevate a phone call to a Zoom video meeting when needed. Read about how Solano County Office of Education used Zoom Phone to solve pressing communications issues during the pandemic. 

Zoom Rooms for hybrid classrooms 

Academic institutions like Quinnipiac University, La Salle-Ramon Llull University Campus Barcelona, and Monte Vista Christian School are using Zoom Rooms to create amazing hybrid learning environments. With Zoom Rooms, launching a session from the classroom is incredibly easy for instructors, and they can also share content wirelessly and engage with in-person and remote students more equally.

Zoom Webinars for campus engagement

Whether you’re hosting virtual speakers or public events, conducting hybrid student orientations, or holding professional development sessions, Zoom Webinars offers a secure platform with a larger capacity and greater control over attendee interaction. 

Supporting hybrid & flexible learning

With more academic institutions looking to offer flexible options for students, the Zoom Education plan offers a step up from Zoom Basic for virtual and hybrid learning. The good news is educational funding is available in the U.S. to support technology upgrades that will help schools and universities deliver remote and hybrid instruction.

See how Zoom is helping schools, districts, and higher education institutions prepare for future hybrid education needs, and access our hybrid learning checklist.

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