Summary

Nuisance disruptions to classes are a risk with online classes just as they are with in-person classes. We expect incidents of both to be equally rare. Below are suggestions to prevent and options to deal with disruptions in any online Zoom meeting.

Background

Media has reported specific incidents of malicious actors disrupting Zoom meetings and/or apparently accidental unknown persons in Zoom meetings. Meeting IDs were posted publicly in the reported cases. Conferencing and security email lists have reported both concern for and unsubstantiated reports of similar incidents. Some technical staff at Notre Dame have expressed concern for the potential for disruption of synchronous classes.

Analysis

Disruption of Zoom sessions is a risk that faculty should be prepared for in the same way they are prepared for disruption of in-person classes. Disruptive behavior in class online or in-person is rare but real risk. Because there is no profit motive, we expect disruptions to be infrequent and unsustained. With a proportionate and measured response, classes can move past disruptions to continue learning.

Prevention

Do not share your meeting IDs, including your Personal Meeting ID (PMI) publicly, especially not on social media.
Avoid using your Personal Meeting ID (PMI) to host public events. Learn about meeting IDs and how to generate a random meeting ID (at the 0:27 mark) in this video tutorial.
Remind students that online class behavior is covered under the applicable policies like Acceptable Use and Honor Code.
Consider using the Waiting Room feature to control who comes and goes.
Optionally hosts can prevent participants from screen sharing during a specific meeting or all meeting on their account. Note that in a teaching scenario, TAs and students would not be able to share their screen.
Lock the meeting after everyone joins. In the meeting, click Participants at the bottom of your Zoom window. In the Participants pop-up, click the button that says Lock Meeting.

If there is a greater risk of, or history of disruption, consider the following additional options:

Allow only signed-in users to join. This is useful if you want to control your guest list and invite only those you want at your event — other students at your school or colleagues, for example.
Use meeting passwords. You don’t have to share the actual meeting link! Generate a random Meeting ID when scheduling your event and require a password to join.

Dealing with a disruptive participant

Remove unwanted or disruptive participants: From that Participants menu, you can mouse over a participant’s name, and several options will appear, including Remove. Click that to kick someone out of the meeting. They will not be able to rejoin.
Put ‘em on hold: You can put everyone else on hold, and the attendees’ video and audio connections will be disabled momentarily. Click on someone’s video thumbnail and select Start Attendee On Hold to activate this feature. Click Take Off Hold in the Participants list when you’re ready to have them back.
Disable video: Hosts can turn someone’s video off. This will allow hosts to block unwanted, distracting, or inappropriate gestures on video or for that time your friend’s inside pocket is the star of the show.
Mute participants: Hosts can mute/unmute individual participants or all of them at once. Hosts can block unwanted, distracting, or inappropriate noise from other participants. You can also enable Mute Upon Entry in your settings to keep the clamor at bay in large meetings.
Turn off file transfer: In-meeting file transfer allows people to share files through the in-meeting chat. Toggle this off to keep the chat from getting bombarded with unsolicited pics, GIFs, memes, and other content.
Turn off annotation: You and your attendees can doodle and mark up content together using annotations during screen share. You can disable the annotation feature in your Zoom settings to prevent people from writing all over the screens.
Disable private chat: Zoom has in-meeting chat for everyone or participants can message each other privately. Restrict participants’ ability to chat amongst one another while your event is going on and cut back on distractions. This is really to prevent anyone from getting unwanted messages during the meeting.

Troubleshooting

Allow removed participants to rejoin:When you do remove someone, they can’t rejoin the meeting. But you can toggle your settings to allow removed participants to rejoin, in case you boot the wrong person.
Zoom’s Support Site has additional information and tutorials to help.