How to use Zoom Basic with the 40 minute limit

A Zoom Basic license only allows group meetings up to 40 minutes, but a typical course session lasts longer than that!  How can instructors use Zoom to teach with that limit?  

The answer is simple: After meeting times out, users may restart the meeting after waiting 1 minute by just clicking on the same meeting link.  (Back to back meetings just can’t overlap.)  Follow these steps to get the most from your Zoom account.

1. Instructor schedules a meeting in Canvas.  
2. Students join the meeting.  
3. Instructor has pre-set a break for the meeting at 30 minutes (or whatever time feels like a good stopping point.) 
4. At the 30-minute mark, the instructor tells students they are taking a 5 minute break, and instructs students to return in 5 min. 
5. The instructor ends the meeting. 
6. When it’s time to return to the meeting, the instructor restarts the same meeting she or he just ended. (Same meeting ID, same calendar invite, etc.) 
7. Students click on the same link they did before.  
8. Everyone is in the same meeting, only it is a new meeting now, with a new 40-min. time limit.  

Instructors can run back to back meetings like this as many times as they wish, the meetings just can’t overlap.  The meeting either has to time out and everyone gets kicked off, or the instructor has to end the meeting before 40 minutes and restart it after a 1 minute “break.  

Basic Zoom Meetings can also be recorded to the host’s computer (not recommended due to the file size, but it is possible.) They just can’t record to the cloud.