This article describes the steps that instructors (or admins) need to take within each Blackboard course to complete the integration with Zoom and Echo360. The information here assumes that your Administrator has properly configured the LTI Pro App for your institution's Zoom account, and has added a Zoom LTI tool to Blackboard.
IMPORTANT: For full Zoom/LMS/Echo360 integration, you MUST be opted in to the Automatic copy of Zoom recordings to Echo360 (the toggle is turned on). In addition, your Zoom login email must match your Blackboard email OR you must configure an Alternate email for your Zoom account.
See also Zoom Integration for Instructors and Teaching Assistants.
Step 1 - Link your Blackboard course to an Echo360 section
Maybe you perform this regularly for your Blackboard courses. Maybe your administrator does this for you. Maybe your institution automatically creates new Echo360 course sections when you link from Blackboard. However this happens for you, the first thing you need to do is add the Echo360 tool link to your Blackboard course, then click on it and ensure that you land in an Echo360 section.
Use these instructions for adding the link to your course: Adding the Echo360 Tool Link to Blackboard Courses. Then click the link.
If you do the mapping to an existing Echo360 Section, clicking the link will look like this (or similar):
Select the Term, Course, and Section (or in some cases just the Section) to link this course to.
If your Administrator does the linking OR Echo360 is set up to automatically create the section for you, clicking the Echo360 link will look like this:
That's all you have to do for the first step!
There may or may not already be classes in the linked section. The Zoom meetings you create in Step 3 will create new classes for the recordings once they are complete. Either way, as long as you have this Blackboard course linked to an Echo360 Section, you are ready to move on to the Zoom portion of the setup.
While it is not strictly necessary to do this first, it is important that the Blackboard course to Echo360 section link exists. Doing so ensures that the recordings of the Zoom meetings you schedule for this course are automatically published into classes in the linked Echo360 section.
Step 2 - Add a Zoom tool link to your Blackboard course
The process for adding a Zoom link to your course is nearly the same as the one used for adding an Echo360 link to your course. Remember, you will want to do this for each of your courses, to set up course-specific meetings in Zoom and write them to the Echo360 section linked in step 1 above.
To add a Zoom link to your course
- Navigate to the main course page in Blackboard.
- Select Content from the top of the course page.
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Find the Zoom tool created by your Administrator and select it.
- Give the link a name and description (optional) that indicates to students that this is the link for joining the Zoom class meetings.
- Complete the rest of the form as appropriate and click Submit.
Your Blackboard Course should now have TWO links; one to the Echo360 section and one to Zoom, as shown in the below figure.
Now it's time to schedule your Zoom class meetings.
Step 3 - Schedule Zoom classes for this course
Now that you have linked to an Echo360 section and have added a Zoom link to your course, it's time to set up your Zoom class meeting schedule!
To schedule Zoom classes for this course
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Click the Zoom link you created in the course. The Zoom scheduling interface appears.
- Click Schedule a New Meeting as identified in the above figure.
- Complete the form, including date(s), time, duration, and whether the meeting is a recurring one.
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SCROLL DOWN to the Meeting Options section, as shown in the below figure. IT IS IMPORTANT that you check Record the meeting automatically in the cloud.
WHY is this important? Two reasons. First, so that your classes are automatically recorded without you having to remember to click Record. Second, so that those recordings go to the Zoom cloud and NOT your local computer. Echo360 can only pull the recordings from the Zoom cloud.
If you do NOT enable this, you will need to manually click Record on each meeting and (if given as an option) select Record to cloud. - When you are done, click Save.
- Click Course Meetings from the top of the meeting details page, identified in the below figure.
The Zoom panel lists your newly created meeting(s), as shown below. You can repeat these steps to add other class meetings for this course as appropriate.
Students who click the Zoom link will see a Join button for each meeting. You will see the meeting list page, including buttons to Start the next meeting, or Delete a meeting if appropriate.
These meetings are now associated with this Blackboard course. The recordings of these meetings will be automatically published to your Echo360 section when they complete.
The below figure shows a new class in the Echo360 section that was automatically created when the Zoom meeting was finished and copied over from Zoom.
And you're done!
Students can use the Zoom link to access class meetings, and use the Echo link to access the recordings of those classes along with other materials you may post. You can use the Zoom link to start your class meetings, and the Echo link to post additional materials to the classes, view student engagement in the section, and export engagement data to your Blackboard gradebook.