Thomasians rejoiced as the 40-minute time limit for basic accounts was lifted once again by the teleconferencing company.

With the unlimited minutes, Thomasians can hold hours-long Zoom meetings and communicate with their peers for academic and extracurricular purposes.

Krisha De Vera, chairperson of the Technicals and Talents of the Nursing Central Board of Students, expressed how the temporary lift has benefitted her work.

“It is very user-friendly in a way that the [user interface] is set to be easily manipulated by any user and it is organized in a convenient way. The icons [as well as its settings] are also easy to locate,” De Vera stated in an interview with TomasinoWeb.

MS Teams and Google Meet were video conferencing tools that the students utilized as alternatives to Zoom. However, these lacked certain advantageous features, such as a lower bandwidth, closed caption transcript, chatbox transcript, and the option to view multiple people at the same time, according to De Vera.

Janis Santiago, a third-year communication arts major, shared that unlimited Zoom meetings and its user-friendly features lessened the pressure of fulfilling academic requirements and projects.

“We would have more time to share our ideas and thoughts during the process of our activities,” she shared.

She also found it difficult to use other video conferencing tools because of their “heavy data use.”

Both students urged the administrators to avail a Zoom Pro subscription so that they can maximize all the helpful features for meetings or gatherings.

“I would encourage them to avail of the Zoom [Pro] subscription since you can stretch your money’s use here,” de Vera said.

Santiago emphasized the importance of using reliable video conferencing like Zoom for online learning.

“It [Zoom] offers features to make online learning a bit easier for everyone,” she said.

The University provides Pro subscriptions for faculty members and Basic subscriptions for students and non-academic staff.

A Basic account can only hold a maximum of 100 participants with a 40-minute time limit, while a Pro account can have unlimited minutes and accommodate up to 300 participants.

Since the University’s switch to an Enhanced Virtual Mode of learning, Zoom, together with Blackboard Collaborate Ultra and Google Meet, has been utilized to deliver synchronous classes.