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, Microsoft OneDrive, or Dropbox. 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 Code42 (CrashPlan) is running on your primary machine, you can log in to check. 

Technology Access

For faculty who lack broadband access, please reach out to the IS Service Desk by submitting a ticket, emailing help@wfu.edu, or calling 336-758-4357 to request a hotspot. Faculy and staff who are without their laptop due to repairs or other reasons, reach out to the Service Desk to request a loaner. Please be sure to include your phone number and shipping address to expedite processing.

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 This tool is great for easy-to-join video-calls. Google Meet does not require any downloads or plug-ins for your participants and works well on all devices. Planning on recording your meeting? Google Meet automatically saves your recorded video meeting to Google Drive. Google Meet has a captioning feature to better support your audience. Please note, captions are machine-generated, not recordable, and are currently only available in English. *For the best experience, we recommend using your computer for audio connection.

Webex Make calls from your WFU phone number and Chat using the Webex App. Log into Webex or view the IS Service Page to learn more.

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 account or view the IS Service Page to learn more. You can also check out the Using Zoom at Wake help article. *For the best experience, we recommend using your computer for audio connection.

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.

In addition, there are multiple Cloud Storage options, check out this Cloud Storage Comparison Table to learn which tool is right for you. 

Directory & Information

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

Phone Forwarding & Voicemail For faculty and staff with a University phone, we recommend forwarding your work phone number to another phone number to be able to answer your phone when away from the office. Voicemail can be accessed through your Gmail account. You can review the remote functions of your voicemail and change your voicemail greeting to indicate you are working remotely.

Webex Teams Download the Webex Teams desktop app to use your WFU phone number to answer and return calls. Learn more on the IS Webex Teams Service Page.

Visit software@wfu.edu to view and download additional software for students, faculty, and staff.