How to set up Zoom for online classes in a coaching institute

Zoom's defaults suit an office meeting where everyone is trusted, and a paid coaching batch isn't one. Turn on the waiting room, tie sign-in to registration, make screen sharing host-only, block private chat and keep recording for yourself, then take attendance from the usage reports. That keeps out gatecrashers and casual link-sharers. It won't stop a paying student recording the class, and Zoom has no idea who has paid.

Change the defaults in the web portal before the first class

Almost everything below lives in the Zoom web portal under Settings, on the Meeting and Recording tabs. The Meeting tab is split into sections such as Security, Schedule Meeting and In Meeting (Basic). Zoom's help pages say a screen-sharing change made during a meeting applies only to that session, and the next meeting goes back to the portal defaults. Fix it in Monday's class and Tuesday's class starts with the old default.

You'll also need a paid licence. The free Basic plan ends meetings at 40 minutes, which rules out a 90-minute lecture on its own. Meeting authentication, registration, waiting room options and usage reports are paid features too. Then check capacity. Zoom's pricing page lists Pro at 100 participants per meeting, the same as the free plan, and Business at 300. Put a batch of 150 on a Pro licence and fifty students are stuck outside on the first day.

Who gets into the class

Start in the Security section. Turn on Waiting Room, so nobody enters until you or a co-host admits them. Then open Edit Options under Waiting Room Options and tick "Move participants to the waiting room if the host dropped unexpectedly". When your broadband dies in a power cut, the batch waits on a holding screen instead of sitting in an unsupervised room. Make a teaching assistant co-host so they can admit students against the batch list while you teach. Zoom's guide to enabling and customising the waiting room has the full list of options.

That option also switches off "Allow participants to join before host", which sits under Schedule Meeting, and you want it off anyway. Zoom's help page says that without the host there are no host controls, so nobody can mute everyone, lock the meeting or remove a participant. Forty teenagers alone in that room for ten minutes is asking for trouble.

Passcodes help less than people think. "Require a passcode when scheduling new meetings" keeps out strangers guessing meeting IDs. But "Embed passcode in invite link for one-click join" puts the passcode inside the link, and a student forwarding the WhatsApp message forwards both anyway. Keep the passcode on, but don't count on it. Don't run batches on your Personal Meeting ID either. Give each batch its own recurring meeting, so its registrations and reports stay separate and you can retire its link when the batch ends.

The real control is sign-in. Once meeting authentication is on in the Security section and you tick "Require authentication to join" while scheduling, students have to sign in to Zoom to enter. The basic "Sign in to Zoom" profile admits anyone with any Zoom account, though, and a free account takes a minute to create. It proves the person has an account, not that they paid.

What ties a seat to a student is registration plus a matching sign-in rule.

1. As the account owner or an admin, add an authentication profile that uses "Signed in to account associated with invited email".
   
   
2. When scheduling the batch, tick Required under Registration and choose that profile under "Require authentication to join".
   
   
3. Save, open the meeting's Registration tab and click Edit under Registration Options. Choose Manually Approve and untick "Allow registrants to join from multiple devices".
   
   
4. Approve only email addresses that appear in your fee register.
   
   
5. Run a 15-minute test session two days before the batch starts, with a joining guide in Hindi and English.
   
   

With that profile, Zoom requires each registrant to be signed in with the email they registered. A friend holding a forwarded link can't use it without the student's Zoom login. That turns link-sharing into account-sharing, which is a different problem, covered in our guide on stopping account sharing in online courses. Expect friction on day one. In a batch of 150, a few students will have registered with one Gmail and signed in to Zoom with another, often a parent's account on a shared family phone. That is what the test session is for.

Screen sharing, chat and what students see of each other

Under In Meeting (Basic), set Screen sharing's "Who can share?" to Host Only. One student sharing an unrelated video in front of 200 classmates derails a lecture, and in a batch of minors it becomes a safeguarding issue. When a student needs to show their working, allow sharing from Host tools in the meeting, then switch it back.

Chat needs more thought, because in big batches doubts arrive in chat far more than by voice. Keep Meeting chat on and limit who participants can chat with to Everyone. In Zoom's terms that means public messages only; the option that adds private messages is "Everyone and anyone directly". Private chat in a mixed batch of 16-year-olds is where trouble starts, and it's the institute that gets the parent's phone call. If 300 students start typing "yes sir" and the doubts get buried, switch to "Host and co-hosts" for the lecture part. Students can then send you a question without it reaching the whole room. Limit "Allow users to copy or save chats from the meeting" to host and co-hosts too, because chat logs collect phone numbers.

Turn off "Allow participants to rename themselves", so names in your attendance export stay as registered, and keep "Allow removed participants to rejoin" off. For batches with younger students, start Focus mode from Host tools. Students then see only your video, your co-hosts' and anyone you spotlight, while you still see everyone. Zoom says Focus mode isn't available in breakout rooms, so plan small-group work around that.

Recording: Zoom's own recorder, and everything else

On the Recording tab, leave "Record to computer files" on for yourself. Under "Who can request host permission to record?", untick "External meeting participants". Students sign in with their own accounts, outside yours, so Zoom treats them as external and they can no longer ask to use its record button. If you use cloud recording, don't post the share link in the batch group, because a link with the passcode embedded works for anyone it's forwarded to. If you must share one, set an expiry date, keep a passcode and switch off "Viewers can download".

Two more settings go further, each with a cost. "Prevent screen capture of meeting content" keeps the meeting window, shared screen and chat out of screenshots and screen-capture tools. It needs recent Zoom apps on Windows, Mac, Android or iOS, and Zoom's prevent screen capture article lists the versions. Students on the web app, on Linux or on an outdated app join audio-only. The student on an old laptop hears you but can't see the board, so get the batch to update before day one. The setting also can't be changed once the meeting starts.

"Add watermark", under Schedule Meeting, lays part of each viewer's email address over shared content and video. It needs sign-in to be on, and with the registered-email profile above, the address it shows belongs to someone on your fee register. A clip filmed off a student's screen then carries a clue to whose screen it was. The mark belongs to the live view, though. A replay you post later was recorded once, so it can't name the student watching it. Our explainer on dynamic watermarking covers why a mark has to identify the viewer to be worth anything.

None of these settings can see a phone held up to a laptop screen. That route stays open in every meeting tool, as our piece on students filming the screen with a phone explains.

Attendance: what Zoom's reports give you, and what you'll still do by hand

On a paid plan, go to Reports, then Usage Reports, then Meeting and webinar history. Pick a date range of up to a month, click the participant count for a class and export the list. Tick "Show unique users" so a student who dropped and rejoined appears once. Zoom says a meeting shows up there once it has been over for at least 15 minutes.

The export tells you who joined. Matching it to your batch list is still your job. Say you run four batches with five classes a week each. That is twenty exports a week, each checked against a spreadsheet, with the student who joined from phone and laptop and the one listed under their phone's model name. Registration and the rename lock clear up most of that. Even then, Zoom can't tell you who watched the replay, who did the homework sheet or whose instalment lapsed last week.

What Zoom can't do for a paid course

Zoom is a meeting tool. It knows who joined a meeting; it doesn't know who paid, for which batch, or until when. When a student stops paying in month three, someone has to remember to cancel their registration. When a batch ends, its recurring meeting and links live on until somebody deletes them.

Leaks follow from the same gap. Links get forwarded into Telegram groups and cloud recording links get reposted. Even with capture prevention on, a paying student can film the screen with a second phone, even live into an outside group. Our guide on reducing course leaks on Telegram covers what to do once that starts. Getting around a capture protection to copy a paid class can be an offence under section 65A of the Copyright Act, 1957. This is general information, not legal advice.

Then there's the admin. Tests, notes, replays, fees and attendance end up in separate tools, stitched together in spreadsheets every week. That works for one teacher with two batches. It stops working around the point you hire a full-time coordinator just to keep the lists in sync.

Our advice is to keep Zoom for free demo classes, parent-teacher meetings, faculty meetings and small mentoring groups, which it handles well. Once a batch's fees are high enough that one leaked series hurts, move the paid live classes off it.

On Upclass, a paid batch's live classes sit inside apps in your institute's own name on Android, iOS, Windows and Mac, next to its courses and tests. Two gaps kept coming up above: a login passed to a friend, and a class recorded off the screen. VidSafe's account-sharing prevention and screen- and camera-recording detection are aimed at exactly those. Book a demo and we'll show you a live class set up the way your batches run.

Frequently asked questions

Is the free Zoom plan enough for online classes?

No, not for regular coaching. The Basic plan ends meetings at 40 minutes, and authentication, registration and usage reports need a paid account. It's fine for a short free demo class.

Can students record a Zoom class without the teacher knowing?

Yes. Zoom's recording permissions control only Zoom's own recorder. "Prevent screen capture of meeting content" hides the meeting window from capture tools on supported Zoom apps, but nothing in Zoom can see a second phone filming the screen.

How do I take attendance in a Zoom class?

On a paid plan, use Reports, then Usage Reports, then Meeting and webinar history, and export the participant list for the class. Turn on registration and switch off renaming first, or the names won't match your batch list.

How do I stop students sharing the Zoom link?

You can't stop the forwarding, but you can make a forwarded link useless. Require registration with manual approval, plus an authentication profile that makes each registrant sign in with the email they registered. Someone else holding the link then can't get in without that student's Zoom login.