The University System of New Hampshire (USNH) continues to phase out Zoom as its primary video conferencing platform, moving towards Microsoft Teams as a cost-reduction method.
USNH Vice Chancellor for Technology Bill Poirier said new incoming students and faculty are receiving licenses for the free Basic Zoom plan, as opposed to the paid Pro plan which was previously licensed to all USNH users. Faculty and staff who require Pro capabilities can request an exception from Enterprise Technology and Services (ET&S).
Vice President for Finance and Administration Nathalie Houder said the majority of exceptions made with Pro accounts have been for webinars with attendees from outside the university system.
“For some pockets [of users], Teams may not be as conducive,” Houder said.
Besides those exceptions, Houder described consistency across the campus and the system as “critical,” especially as the system continues to prepare to launch the Workday shared services platform. Houder cited the switch to Teams as a small example of a move towards that consistency.
Houder added that ET&S conducted feedback sessions with faculty and staff before announcing the decision to switch to Teams.
“ET&S has done a really good job getting feedback from campus.”
Poirier compared the move away from Zoom to the system’s departure from outdated systems such as Banner and Colleague, which he said have been installed in the system since the 1990s. He cited an abundance of passwords to remember and a lack of integration were difficulties presented by having numerous separate products from multiple vendors. This includes using Zoom in addition to Microsoft products, as opposed to a suite of products from a single vendor by using Teams in addition to other Microsoft products.
Director of Digital Learning Jenny Darrow said during the spring semester, digital learning integrated Teams as a Learning Tools Integration (LTI) protocol in Canvas so students can access the service through their courses. Zoom remains integrated with Canvas, and Darrow theorized many faculty will choose to use Zoom for as long as it remains because they will be more familiar with it.
Darrow said while ET&S is offering virtual Teams training sessions, she is looking to take notes from the sessions to plan in-person digital learning sessions for the spring and summer.
“I think it will be some of the very basic simple things that we know that faculty do in Zoom now so there’s a nice translation,” Darrow said. She said the in-person sessions would answer questions including, “How do you share files? How do you share your screen? How do you record? Where does that recording go? How do you take that recording and embed it in your Canvas course? How do you do pollings and breakout rooms or any other kind of interactive sessions? Those are the kinds of things we would do.”
Darrow added that Teams has more convenient overall capabilities than Zoom.
“I have Teams up and running all the time. That’s how I communicate with my colleagues at [Plymouth State University] and [University of New Hampshire],” Darrow said. “They primarily use [Teams] for the chat and everything, so it’s the difference. It’s like looking at the dashboard of the USS Enterprise. It’s not complicated, but there’s a lot of features in there.”
Charlotte King can be contacted at
cking@kscequinox.com
