This document is intended to provide information on some of the popular Video Conferencing tools that are being used for online learning.

Google Meet

Summary: Google Meet is the simplest option for starting a video conference quickly, especially because it's included with all Whitman Accounts. It's simple to use, but fairly basic, lacking many of the advanced features that Zoom has.
You can add a tiled view of participants using the Whitman Grid View for Google Meet.
Price: Free
Requirements:
- Google Meet is purely browser-based, no installation necessary
- All participants need a Whitman or Google Account
Features:
- Maximum participants: 250
- Time limit: none
- Join via phone call: Yes
- Recording: Yes
- Special controls for meeting host: No (all participants are the same)
- "Raise hand" feature for attendees: No
- Breakout rooms: No
- Desktop sharing: Yes
- Private chat: No
- Co-annotation: No
- Whiteboarding: No
More Information:

Zoom

Summary: Zoom has many advanced features, the catch is the free version is limited to 40-minute meetings. See this KB article for more information on using Zoom.
Price:
- Students: to connect to a class that is using Zoom, it's free for you.
- Faculty: costs are free or $60 per year (contact IMS to set up either a Free or Premium account). Free accounts are limited to 40 minutes per session.
Requirements:
- All participants need to install the Zoom app. Host needs a Zoom account to set up a meeting, no account required for members to join meetings
- To get a Zoom license (either free or premium) contact ims@whitman.edu
Features:
- Maximum participants: Free - 100 / Premium - 300
- Time limit: Free - 40 minutes / Premium - none
- Join via phone call: Yes
- Recording: Yes
- Special controls for meeting host: Yes
- "Raise hand" feature for attendees: Yes
- Breakout rooms: Yes
- Desktop sharing: Yes
- Private chat: Yes
- Co-annotation: Yes
- Whiteboarding: Yes
More Information:
- Zoom: Start here
- Managing who can access your Zoom meeting

WCTS strongly recommends that you do not rely on Canvas Conferences. This is because Canvas has said for our license we cannot depend on more than 10 concurrent conferences at the same time for all of Whitman. In other words, if you plan to use it for a class, and 10 other people are already using it, it may not work at that time.