WWU provides free virtual backgrounds of Bellingham campus to use on Zoom

Western Washington University has created virtual backgrounds of its campus for students to use while classes have been moved online due to the coronavirus.

The school moved the remainder of spring classes online to Zoom on March 11 after Whatcom County declared a state of emergency following the county’s first positive test. All classes for the summer semester and commencement ceremonies will also be held online, the school announced recently.

Zoom allows users to use an image as a background during sessions and Western has provided images of the campus for students to use as their background images during video meetings. The set of pictures along with instructions on how to use them can be found on the university’s website.

Students are encouraged to have a green screen, a plain wall or curtain in the background to have the best virtual background results.

Zoom has seen its membership skyrocket from 10 million users in December up to 200 million users by March as schools and businesses across the country look to move operations online.

This story was originally published April 19, 2020 at 5:00 AM.