Stuart Weitzman School of Design
102 Meyerson Hall
210 South 34th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Remote Teaching, Learning, and Working Tools
Weitzman IT Services has prepped a guide for teaching and joining classes, as well as hosting meetings remotely for Faculty, Staff, and Students in response to Coronavirus and the Penn community working and learning remotely. We strongly recommend contacting our IT staff (via ithelp@design.upenn.edu) to check that you are prepared for working remotely from home, and that you are able to access key University services and content we prepare users for remote work via our Remote-ify process.
The University of Pennsylvania offers various tools for faculty and lecturers to host remote classes, lesson recordings, and to collaborate remotely, depending on your needs and workflow.
The University of Pennsylvania offers a number of tools for users to host remote meetings and to collaborate remotely, depending on your needs and workflow.
BlueJeans | Teams | Zoom | |
---|---|---|---|
Breakout rooms | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Closed captioning | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Whiteboard* | ✓* | ✓* | ✓* |
Max meeting attendees | 200 | 250 | 300 |
Live event capabilities | BlueJeans Events (available for free; contact us at ithelp@design.upenn.edu to enable this feature) | Teams Live Event | Zoom Webinar (available through paid add-on license; need a budget code to purchase) |
*Whiteboard functionality is more robust in Miro, which you can read more about on our Miro webpage.
Internet Speed Testing
Having reliable internet is critical in our increasingly digital age. While wireless internet speeds have improved dramatically, the surefire way to secure top speeds and avoid spotty connections is to go with a direct, ethernet or LAN connection to your home network. Once connected, here are some ways to test the speed of your internet connection:
NOTE: To ensure you're getting a good connection, you'll want internet speeds of at least 100-200 MB/s for download and 5-20 MB/s for upload. Most internet providers or local WiFi networks hit these speeds, however if not operating from a private network, you will always be at the whim of local network traffic. This is also the case with greater network traffic or outages (think a portion of a town or city all using internet during peak times, etc).
NOTE 2: Forcing all participants to mute their microphone or webcam not only helps avoid confusion during a remote call or class, it helps drastically reduce internet bandwidth usage. This makes it easier for users with slower or spottier connections to keep up.
BlueJeans Testing
Symantec is the University's supported antivirus product for Windows and Mac OS operating systems. The software is licensed through Penn and is available free of charge to all members of the Penn community. Read more on getting Symantec downloaded and installed here.
The University and the Weitzman School offer two VPN options for accessing both University and Weitzman School resources when working remotely. Read more about getting access to and setting up both VPN clients here.