IT Resources for Working and Teaching Remotely

Wake Forest provides faculty, students, and staff a number of resources to help you conduct your work or teach a class remotely. 

We recommend you test the following equipment at home to be prepared for working and teaching remotely:

• Laptop or desktop computer.
• Microphone – this may be built into your laptop or computer, or you may use an external device such as a USB microphone or headset.
• Webcam – a camera may already be built into your laptop, but you can also use an external USB camera for video conferencing. 
• Internet – either commercially provided (e.g., Spectrum, Windstream) or a wireless hotspot through your mobile phone (which uses cellular data).

If you have trouble using any of this equipment at home, notify your Department Chair or Manager of your home office limitations.

Consider backing up all of your data into Google Drive. View the Cloud Storage Comparison Matrix to learn more about each service.

Tools & Training

There are a variety of tools available for working and teaching at home - use what you are most comfortable with to facilitate your work. Keep reading for a comprehensive list of recommended tools and services. 

To learn more about any of these resources visit the related IS service pages, check out Workday Learning to see if there are any upcoming workshops or classes for these technologies, and search LinkedIn Learning to see what online training is available for each tool. 

Privacy & Security

View the Privacy and Security Practices When Working Remotely and the Privacy and Security Practices for Teleconferencing articles for information regarding security controls and maintaining confidentiality when working remotely. Faculty and staff, be sure CrashPlan is running on your primary machine, you can log in to check. 

Chat, Meet, & Conduct Class Remotely

Strive to make digital meeting and teaching materials as accessible as possible for all participants. Learn more at accessibility.wfu.edu. 

Compare different meeting solution options with this table.

Canvas For faculty teaching in Canvas, utilize the Discussion functionality to communicate with your students. Email individual students or the entire class through the Announcements section. Suggest your students check their notification settings to ensure Canvas announcements are being forwarded to their WFU email address. Post, collect, and grade assignments with SpeedGrader, all within Canvas. Check out the "How to Get Started in Canvas at WFU" handout for more information and learn more at Canvas.wfu.edu.

Google Gmail & Google Groups Communicate with your colleagues or students through Google email, Gmail. Utilize Google Groups to communicate with your teams. Request a google group to make emailing with your project team even easier. Faculty are encouraged to use Google Group for Classes. Every class has a Google Group set up with all of your students added. The group remains up to date as students add or drop your course without any action on your part. To email your class, start typing the class name in the "To:" field of the WFU Google Mail compose email window (e.g. PHY-113) and then select your class.

Google Meet Meet is fully integrated with Google Workspace. Seamlessly jump into a video call from Google Docs, Directory, Chat to take collaboration to the next level by connecting over video – everything ties together so you can always connect and collaborate in context. Chat with your colleagues or fellow students, start a virtual meeting or live stream. Record your video meeting and save automatically to Google Drive. Every meeting created automatically includes its own dial-in details. Google Meet has a captioning feature to support more of your audience. Note that captions are machine-generated, not recordable, and are currently available in English, French, German, Portuguese (Brazil) and Spanish (Spain and Latin America). Available from the Google App launcher or download the app for your laptop, iOS, and Android device.

Zoom Zoom is a video conferencing and meeting solution popular across the higher education industry. Zoom's robust Breakout Rooms allow you to split your meeting up into 50 different sessions, ideal for team and project-based classes and meetings. Zoom is integrated with Canvas! Schedule and manage meetings, start or join meetings, view upcoming meetings, and view and manage previous meeting recordings. To use Zoom in a course, select Settings within the course menu, select Navigation, and locate "Zoom" to add to your course menu. Zoom has created a Tips & Tricks document and a Teacher’s Guide to Educating on Zoom to help you host an ad-hoc meeting, record a zoom class or meeting, deliver virtual instruction, and teach over video. They also created a Zoom Meetings for Education training video to help faculty learn the tool and how best to apply it for the classroom.  Request a Zoom Pro account or view the IS Service Page to learn more.

Collaborate Remotely

Google Workspace Wake Forest faculty, students, and staff have access to this cloud-based collaboration and productivity suite of the following applications: Connect with your colleagues through Gmail, share attachments, and easily communicate with individuals or groups of people. Store documents, presentations, spreadsheets, pictures, videos, and more in your Drive with unlimited storage. Invite people to access these resources easily by sharing its link directly from the file. Collaborate on documents through Docs, which enables real-time collaborative writing and editing.  Work on spreadsheets collaboratively with Sheets. Compile a presentation through Slides. All of these applications in Google Workspace leverage Google security groups, allowing you to permit access to specific people if desired and set sharing settings to view, comment, or edit.

Directory & Information

Wake Forest Internal Directory via Google Contacts The Wake Forest University internal directory is part of our @wfu.edu Google Workspace platform and includes all students, faculty, and staff, so it’s a great way for Deacs to find each other and easily chat, email or meet with them on campus or off. Some information in your Wake Forest Google account is managed by our systems of record (Banner/WIN, Workday), but there are many fields that you may customize. Visit the links below for more information, instructions on how to customize your listing and more.

Workday Sign in to Workday through your browser or download the mobile app to your phone or tablet. View your organization chart, find contact information for colleagues, complete your expense reports, submit your timesheets, request PTO, and more. Make sure your contact information (including your mobile phone number) is up-to-date, and your work phone number and email address are visible. Take this time to update your emergency contact information, along with your Work Space. We encourage you to add a photo to your Workday profile to enhance online collaboration with your colleagues, especially during this remote work period. View more information on how to complete each of these steps at workday.wfu.edu.

Record a Lecture

Camtasia Camtasia is used to record onscreen activity, audio and webcam video, and narrate existing PowerPoint presentations. Through Camtasia, you can record, edit, produce and share course content. If you would like to use Camtasia, the software is available at software.wfu.edu.

Kaltura Kaltura is an enterprise-level, cloud-based media management platform for storing, publishing, and streaming videos, video collections, and other rich media such as audio recordings and images via your computer or mobile device. With our unlimited capacity, you can use Kaltura for your courses and portfolio without any bandwidth or storage limitations. Visit Kaltura.wfu.edu to learn how to access Kaltura through Canvas or the WFU Kaltura MediaSpace.

VPN - Access Select Campus Services

VPN VPN, Virtual Private Network, is a utility that Wake Forest uses to provide users with a secure and convenient way to access certain campus resources when they are away from campus. You do not need to use VPN to access cloud services, such as Gmail, G Suite, Webex, Workday, Canvas, WIN, and academic software. Use VPN to access certain campus resources when off-campus, such as Banner, Cognos, on-premises servers, and the WFU WordPress administrative environment.

WFU Phone & Voicemail Remote Access

Webex  Download the Webex desktop app to use your WFU phone number to answer, make calls, and interact with voicemail.

Visit [email protected] to view and download additional software for students, faculty, and staff.