About a year ago we got a few licenses to conduct a pilot/proof of concept for the Zoom web conference program, and I'd say it was a success! Those who have been using it are pleased, in general, and we have gone ahead and upgraded our licenses to a total of 500. You may be wondering "why Zoom?" and he main reason is that DL students who have to attend their lecture at work, can still access the lecture via Zoom's web interface. Collaborate has no such thing.
There have been some struggles, however. One of the biggest surprises was how big each of the recorded files are. Included in our contract is 750 GB of cloud storage, which seems like a lot, but that beautifully clear sound and video quality comes at a price, and a three-hour lecture can easily end up being a GB or more in size. It's for this reason that we have let you know to save your recordings to one of our other cloud storage systems; https://nps.account.box.com, or https://onedrive.live.com.
Something else that we did not anticipate was that students who attend their lecture via the web client have to deal with some limitations. Different browsers have different capabilities with Zoom, but overall Firefox seems to be the best for students on military networks. Even with Firefox, students will need to dial in for listening and speaking, and students on a web browser can't participate in breakout rooms. If you don't use breakout rooms, this is not an issue, but if you do, your work-around is that those who are on a browser will be their own breakout room group.
If you're interested in more information, please give us a call at 831-656-2020, or go to the Zoom wiki . Also, I've been asked to create a chart comparing the different features of both, so here's that.
The bottom line (literally) is that if you've been waiting to request an account, now is the time! Send an email to clehelp@nps.edu.