Zoom Whiteboard in Canvas

Zoom Whiteboard is a virtual tool for visual collaboration. It enhances meetings by allowing instructors and students to brainstorm, annotate, and organize ideas together. It’s useful for interactive discussions, problem-solving, and concept mapping. Zoom Whiteboards also support asynchronous engagement, enabling ongoing collaboration, group work, or reflection outside of class time.

We recommend creating Zoom Whiteboards for classes through the Zoom LTI (the Zoom tab in Canvas) in your course. This ensures that they are automatically linked to your course, making them easier for students to access. This can also create better organization, helping you find whiteboards you’ve created in the past more easily.

1. Start a Zoom meeting.
2. In the meeting controls toolbar, select the Whiteboards button.

3. Select New Whiteboard or Existing Whiteboards. The new whiteboard will open in the meeting window.
   • If it appears, close the welcome dialogue window after selecting New Whiteboard. (Don’t open a new classic whiteboard.)
   • If you selected Existing Whiteboards, you will be asked to select from the following:
     • How do you want to open the board?
       1. Collaborating: Users are granted edit access.
       2. Presenting: The board opens in presentation mode, and users are granted view access.

Allow persistent access: Allows verified meeting participants to access the whiteboard after the whiteboard is closed and after the meeting ends.

When the steps or screenshot are long, collapse content into an accordion with an introductory sentence here for context an and guidance.

Step 1: Create or choose the whiteboard you want to use

Step 2: Adjust your Zoom LTI share settings

By default, when a Zoom Whiteboard is created in a Canvas course, all students in the course will have Viewer access. If you would like your students to add to or edit the board for asynchronous collaboration, you’ll need to add them as Editors by doing the following:

1. Open the Zoom page (1) in your Course Navigation Menu

2. Ensure you are under the Home page (2) while in the Zoom LTI.
3. Select the options icon (3) to the right of the Schedule a New Meeting button.

4. A dropdown menu will appear. Select Manage Zoom Whiteboard (4) from this menu. 
5. The pop-up window Manage Zoom Whiteboard will appear. The recommended settings are listed below:
   • Enable Zoom whiteboard for course
   • Teacher Permission: Co-Owner
   • Student Permission: Editor
   • Auto Refresh: Daily
6. Select Save (5) to finalize your changes.

Once you have either created a new whiteboard or moved an existing one to your course and you have adjusted the Zoom LTI settings to grant students editing access, students will be able to access the whiteboard via the Zoom page in their course. However, you can share a link directly to the whiteboard from another part of the course, like an announcement or within modules, to make it easier to find.

1. Open the Zoom page (1) in your Course Navigation Menu.

2. On the top navigation menu, select Whiteboard (2). The page will open to a view of your whiteboards within the current Canvas course. (To confirm you are in the correct course, make sure the correct project is highlighted in the menu.)
3. Find the whiteboard you want and select the link (3) icon. This will automatically copy the link for that whiteboard, allowing you to paste it into other parts of your course.