Outschool uses Zoom to host all live classes. It’s integrated into our platform and designed to help you create engaging, high-quality learning experiences.

As a teacher, simply click Start live meeting from your classroom to begin class. Outschool handles the rest! You’ll find this button in the Classroom tab of your class section. You can test your setup ahead of time by starting a Zoom Test Meeting.

Each class section has its own unique Zoom link. Learners can only access the Zoom room for their enrolled section, and they cannot join the meeting until after you’ve entered. Teachers are required to have their cameras on while teaching a live class, and their faces should be fully visible on-screen.

Screen sharing is a powerful Zoom tool—it can help you present slides, show websites, share videos, and more! Zoom also includes a built-in whiteboard option as a screen share option.

To share audio with a video clip, be sure to check Share computer sound and Optimize for video clip in the sharing window.
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🔗 Zoom: Screen Sharing and Sharing Computer Sound

Use the chat box to send messages to learners or answer questions during class. You control who learners can chat with:

Learners cannot send private messages to each other.

Learners can use the Raise Hand button under the Reactions menu to get your attention while muted. This is especially useful in large classes. To lower someone’s hand, open the Participants panel, hover over their name, and click Lower Hand.
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🔗 Zoom: Raise Hand in Meeting
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You can toggle between views from the top-right corner of your Zoom window.

🔗 Zoom: Speaker and Gallery View

Encourage learners to mute themselves when not speaking. You can also mute individual learners or the whole class to minimize background noise.

🔗 Zoom: Muting Participants

Focus Mode lets learners see only you, spotlighted participants, and themselves—helpful for minimizing distractions in lecture-style lessons. Recordings are not affected and will still appear in gallery view unless you're screen sharing.

🔗 Zoom: Focus Mode

Break learners into small groups for collaboration or discussion. Just note - breakout rooms are not recorded, so be sure to monitor them and set clear behavior expectations.

🔗 Zoom: Breakout Rooms

When screen sharing, you and your learners can annotate content for better interaction—drawing, highlighting, or pointing to key information.

You can also:

🔗 Zoom: Using Annotation Tools

Zoom’s automatic live English-language captions support accessibility in class. Learners can turn them on independently.

🔗 Zoom: Live Captioning

To maintain a consistent and safe environment, we recommend disabling the option for learners to rename themselves. You can do this from the Participants panel during class.

Need to temporarily remove a learner from class? The Put in Waiting Room option acts like a virtual timeout. Use it sparingly—you can readmit the learner when you’re ready.

Learners will see: "Waiting for host to let you back in."

🔗 Zoom: Waiting Room

Are Zoom meetings always active?

The meeting link is always accessible to you as the teacher. Learners can only join after you’ve entered.

Why are classes recorded, and who owns the recordings?

Learn more about Outschool’s recording policy here.

What if Zoom isn’t working?

Most Zoom issues are caused by using an outdated version. Try updating Zoom, or uninstall and reinstall it from the Zoom Download Center.

Why did a learner get a “Failed to connect to Zoom” error?

This happens when a learner tries to join the first class meeting before you’ve started it. Ask them to wait until you’ve entered the meeting. If needed, they can refresh the page and try entering again once you’ve started the class.