Back to School with Zoom: The Features You Need to Know This Fall

As we head into a new school year, I wanted to share some of the exciting Zoom innovations that are making a real difference in classrooms — whether you're in K-12, higher ed, or supporting educators behind the scenes.

I recently attended Zoom's Back-to-School webinar, and honestly, there's a lot to be excited about. Here are the highlights:

What's New in Zoom Workplace for Education

Dynamic Gallery View — No more empty backgrounds or half-cropped shoulders. Zoom now intelligently fills your meeting window with faces, making large lecture sessions and office hours feel more connected.

Customizable Captions — Captions got a major upgrade! You can now pin them below shared content, change the size, adjust the color, and Zoom's improved speech AI makes them more accurate than ever. A huge win for accessibility.

Browser Tab Sharing — Share just one tab — not your whole screen. Perfect for faculty who want to show content in an LMS or website without accidentally exposing other open tabs.

AI-Generated Whiteboards — Zoom AI can now auto-generate a whiteboard directly from your meeting discussion. Brainstorming sessions and group projects just got a whole lot easier.

Individual Whiteboard Mode — Instructors can launch a personal whiteboard page for each participant during a live session — like handing out individual worksheets, but digital. You can monitor everyone's work in real time and annotate directly on a student's page. Game-changer for math, language exercises, and design critiques.

Whiteboard Participation Reports — After a whiteboard session, instructors can pull a report showing exactly who contributed, what actions they took, and how engaged they were. Accountability built right in.

Zoom Clips in Meetings — Play any clip from your library directly inside a meeting or webinar. A link drops in chat for latecomers. Think flipped classrooms, pre-recorded lectures, and student presentations — all seamlessly integrated.

Clips Transcript Translation — Record one lecture, and students can read the transcript in any of the supported languages. No extra work on your end. A real barrier-remover for multilingual campuses and ESL learners.

Zoom Hub — All your Zoom assets (whiteboards, docs, clips, cloud recordings, meeting summaries, notes) in one searchable, sortable place. No more digging through menus.

AI That Works For Educators

My Notes — This one is powerful. My Notes captures a full transcript of your meeting and lets you take personal notes alongside it. Ask AI to explain a concept, summarize a section, or surface what might be on the test. And it's not just for Zoom meetings — you can use it from your phone, anywhere, anytime. It's included in your enterprise license.

ZoomMate — Think of it as your AI co-worker for education. Some real-world use cases shared at the webinar:

• Analyzing the depth of student questions across 10 class sessions (thick vs. thin questions, with recommendations)
• Checking whether class sessions are meeting curriculum standards and syllabus goals
• Generating a polished slide deck from class data for leadership reporting

ZoomMate workflows can run on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis — and the deeper automation features are available as a separate license.

A Sneak Peek: The New LMS Integration

This is the one I'm most excited about for higher ed and K-12. Zoom is building a next-generation LMS integration (currently in limited field trials) that includes:

• A ZoomMate-style AI surface embedded directly in your LMS
• Deep linking — embed whiteboards, clips, and Zoom assets directly into announcements, assignments, and course pages
• Zoom Assignments — students submit Zoom Clips or whiteboards as assignments, with automatic ownership transfer to the instructor upon submission and gradebook integration

The public launch is targeted for EDUCAUSE 2026 in Denver (late September).

Resources

Zoom's Customer Success team put together two Back-to-School guides — one for admins and one for faculty & staff. Check the resources tab from the webinar recording that I’ll share below.

Whether you're an IT admin, faculty member, or instructional coach, there's something here for everyone this fall. Zoom is clearly listening to what educators need — and building toward where you actually live and work.

To watch the on-demand recording of this session, click here → Back-to-School Webinar: The Latest Zoom Innovations for Education
 

Here's to a great school year!