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IT Project: Zoom Implementation

Status

July 2020: Phase 2 is complete. BlueJeans account holders continue to receive regular email reminders to move their recordings in BlueJeans before August 1, 2020, when the service is retired.

Project Background

Northwestern IT currently offers two web conferencing tools: BlueJeans and Webex. BlueJeans is licensed specifically to meet teaching and learning needs, while Webex is primarily used for administrative meetings.

In 2019, responding to increased demand for more sophisticated use of web conferencing for teaching and learning purposes, Northwestern IT conducted an evaluation of three market-leading conferencing solutions: BlueJeans, Webex, and Zoom.

The assessment produced a recommendation to adopt Zoom for teaching and learning uses and decommission BlueJeans before the current BlueJeans subscription expires on August 1, 2020.

Note: The existing WebEx service is not affected by this change and there are no plans to discontinue the service.

Goals and Objectives

Expected outcomes as a result of this project are as follows:

• Enablement of a wider variety of collaborative and active learning methods for online instruction
• Improved video and audio quality for instructional web conferencing
• Improved usability for instructional web conferencing
• Annual cost savings

Approach

This project enacts the recommendations of the evaluation, adopting a three-phase approach.

Phase 1

January –March 9 2020: Zoom will be integrated with Canvas and Panopto and be made available to the campus community on March 9. Access to Zoom will require NetID and NetID Password authentication. During this phase, both Zoom and BlueJeans will be available in Canvas for instruction in the spring quarter of 2020. Zoom and BlueJeans will also both be available for broader use, independent of Canvas during this time.

Phase 2

Beginning June 15, at the start of summer quarter 2020: From this time on, recording capabilities will be turned off in BlueJeans and BlueJeans will no longer be available in Canvas. Communications instructing users to save their recordings or transfer them to Panopto (Lecture Capture) will be provided.

Phase 3

August 1, 2020:  BlueJeans will be fully decommissioned, and users will no longer be able to access BlueJeans using their Northwestern NetID.

Timeline

Project Contacts

Last Updated: 2 July 2020