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Staff: Working Remotely
Working off-site in support of Beloit.
At times, it is necessary for college staff to work remotely for extended periods of time. This can be difficult to adjust to, especially balancing with other demands for your time at home.
These resources are here to help you start and continue to work remotely. Likewise, your supervisor, office, and campus are all available to help and make sure you have the flexibility and equipment to do your work effectively.
Getting Started
- Have a discussion with your supervisor regarding your situation and how that may affect your ability to work remotely. In particular, consider any tasks you do which can only be done on campus and how best to handle them in your absence.
- Determine what technology and equipment you may need to work remotely. If you need additional technology, email Library & Information Technology Services at itsupport@beloit.edu for assistance.
- Establish a regular work space and routine, if possible.
- Keep in contact with your supervisor and office. If you need support, ask for it.
Updated Resources
Library & Information Technology Services now has an enterprise license for Zoom. A license can be assigned to anyone who needs to use this video platform.
While Zoom also has a free version, the licensed copy lets you have a longer video session (free is capped at 45-minutes) and allows you to record the session. You can use Zoom from any device.
Recording a Meeting
Zoom Cloud recording of video conferences has been disabled for our organization due to limitations in available space on Zoom’s cloud servers. In order to record and share a conference, use the following steps:
Use Zoom’s local recording feature to record and save a conference locally to your computer.
Upload the recorded video to your Google Drive. All Beloit College faculty, staff, and students have unlimited storage space on their college Drive account.
Share a link to your uploaded video on Moodle, via email, or through other methods.
Instructors can create access for students in the class to watch or re-watch past recorded class sessions without violation of student privacy laws or the educational records prohibitions of FERPA, as long as those recordings are not available to any other audience.
Resources
- LITS documentation for Zoom
- Video Conferencing using Zoom Workshop – LITS
- Zoom: Teach Online Class Sessions – University of Minnesota
- Zoom Best Practices and Tips – Western Illinois University
- Student Tips for Participating in Online Learning – Zoom
Need assistance?
LITS can provide assistance and support. Please submit a School Dude ticket if you need help.
The college has unlimited use of Google Hangouts/Meet. Find this by locating the 9-dot grid on the upper right section of your Gmail window. Click on the grid and you’ll see Meet, Google’s video conferencing solution.
Meet can be used with up to 250 participants per call, and can do live-streaming to 100,000 viewers within a domain (our domain is beloit.edu), and you can record and save these video calls to Google Drive. You can create a Google Shared Drive for each class and use it to store recorded sessions and other materials that students need to use for coursework.
Instructors can create access for students in the class to watch or re-watch past recorded class sessions without violation of student privacy laws or the educational records prohibitions of FERPA, as long as those recordings are not available to any other audience.
Resources
Need assistance?
LITS can provide assistance and support. Please submit a School Dude ticket if you need help.
To access certain campus resources from off-site (such as the shared (M) drive, Jenzabar, Raiser’s Edge, etc.), you can connect to the college VPN.
LITS Documentation for Connecting to the College VPN
When to use the VPN
Use of the college VPN should be limited only to the situations in which it is required. While public VPN services exist to help address privacy concerns while browsing the web, the college VPN is not designed for this purpose and should be used exclusively for accessing campus resources that are not available from off-site.
Importance of Disconnecting the VPN
It’s important to remember to disconnect the VPN when not using the above resources from off-campus.
While connected to the VPN, you may notice that network connectivity (including web browsing, file transfers, etc.) will be slower than normal, even while on a fast internet connection. The VPN client may also try to keep you connected to the VPN even after you have returned to campus or after you have restarted your computer or disconnected from the internet.
To prevent connection speed issues or other problems, be sure to disconnect from the VPN after using it.