Sakai: Meetings

Meetings (Web Conferencing, BigBlueButton tool)

Meetings (BigBlueButton) is an open source webinar tool available in Sakai that allows you to communicate with your students remotely. You can display presentations, use a white board, use audio and/or a webcam, chat with your students, and share your desktop. Meetings is a synchronous tool, which means users have to be online at the same time to interact. You can also add polls to your Meeting and record your Meetings, too.

Creating and Running a Meeting plus Student Handouts *

• Are step-by-step instructions available for creating, starting, and running a Meeting? Yes.
  • Instructions for an instructor to create a meeting: Create a Meeting Handout
  • Instructions for an instructor to run a meeting: Running a Meeting Handout
  • Instructions for an instructor to share their desktop during a Meeting: Sharing a Desktop during a Meeting Handout | video
  • Handout for Students* Instructions for Students attending a Meeting
  • Do's and Don'ts of Synchronous Online Learning: Plan, Prepare, Practice!

What can you do with Fall 2016 Meetings 1.0 Release?

• We have the latest version, released Fall 2016, BigBlueButton 1.0
• Latest VIDEO Tutorials for Instructors and Students (BigBlueButton)
  • Setting up Audio, Viewer (student) Overview, and Moderator/Presenter (instructor) Overview
• New Fall 2016 videos!:
  • Faster Screen Sharing,
  • Live Closed Captioning, and
  • Breakout Rooms
• New Fall 2016 step-by-step instructions for Closed Captioning, Faster Desktop Sharing and Breakout Rooms
• BigBlueButton's (Blindside Networks) User Guide
  • What can an instructor do with the Meetings 1.0 tool/BigBlueButton? (BigBlueButton)
  • What could an instructor do with .9 of Meetings/BigBlueButton

Meetings Basics

• Computer requirements
• Audio Setup

Meetings Features

• User Area
• Uploading and Displaying Presentations
  • Can I upload Microsoft documents to BigBlueButton? Don't, they may not display well. Tip: Save your file as a PDF
  • How do I upload a document to display to my students?
• Using the Whiteboard
• Chatting in the Chat box
• Managing your Layout

Webcam Features

• The instructor can display their webcam, as well as students.
  • After the instructor has plugged in their device, they must go to the upper left corner, and click on "Share my Webcam". You'll be presented with a Webcam Settings dialog box.
  • In the Webcam Settings dialog box, you must click on the Start Sharing button to display your Webcam or click Cancel.
    • Optionally, you can change the device you're using and change the size of your webcam display.
  • Your webcam will display in the Webcams area, usually located in the lower left corner of the default presentation.
  • Students can perform the same steps to display their webcams.
  • Instructors can move their cursor over student webcam displays, click on the microphone icon, and mute or unmute them.
    • Instructors can also click on the "X" in the upper right area of a student webcam display, and close the display.
• Can I permanently lock the my students from using their webcams? YES, see the Users Area above for details.

Advanced: Desktop Sharing

• What does an instructor need to do to share their desktop?
  • Important: You must download Java (BigBlueButton).
• Here are the instructions for sharing your desktop: video
• How does an instructor share their desktop on Mac OS X? Tip: How-to videos for both Safari and Firefox
• Can I share a video while sharing my desktop? NO. Your students will not hear the video (but you will). To share a video, share the link to the video in the Chat box.

Record and Playback Basics

Meetings does record lectures now easily. The recordings won't show up immediately, but short recordings show up fairly quickly. You can "Hide" Recordings (make recordings unavailable) to students, too.

• New! Is there a record start/stop button? YES.

• How do I set up a recording? When you create a meeting, you must click on the box beside Recording.

• When does a recording start and stop?
  • BigBlueButton will record the meeting from the time you press the record button to the time you press the record button again.
  • You can start and stop the recording as many times as you like-only one recording will be created.

Note: When you set up a meeting, you can also state it's duration, therefore, a meeting may also end when it reaches your stated meeting duration. (BigBlueButton)

• What web browsers play recordings? Firefox and Chrome do playback recordings, but Internet Explorer and Safari do not. (BigBlueButton)

• How can I hide a recording? In Meetings, in Recordings, move your cursor over the recording you want to hide.
  • Below it, you'll now see links you can click on to Hide or Delete the recording.
  • After you click Hide, make sure the Status changes from Published to UnPublished. Now only you can see your recording.
• How can I make a hidden recording available again? Follow the steps above, but now you'll see a new link "Show" you can click on.
  • After you click on Show, make sure the status changes back to Published.

Advanced Record and Playback

• What parts of the session does the latest version of BigBlueButton record? Your presentation, now polling, whiteboard and mouse movements, plus webcams, desktop sharing, chat, as well as audio (BigBlueButton). Note: The User Area is not recorded.

• What does a sample recording now look like? After clicking on the link: You have to wait for it to "load", then click on the Play button in the lower left corner to start the recording.

• When does a recording appear for review? It can take a few minutes, depending on how long your recording is, after you make a recording:
  • Click on Meetings, Click on Recordings.
  • To the right of your Meeting title, you can click on one of two links to recordings of your meeting. Click on a recording link to review it.

• How do you Share Recordings?
  • Click on Meetings, click on Recordings.
  • Now you can direct students to the Meetings Recordings area link, or after clicking on the video link, you can copy the web address of the link and share it with others.

• Can I download recordings? You can do this now, but we don't recommended it. Why not share the link to the video?

Polls

• Polling was added September, 2015. Here's a number of screen shots of how to add polling to your next Meeting.

Breakout Rooms

• New! Breakout Rooms were added August 31, 2016. Here is a video with step-by-step instructions Breakout Room Demo video

Accessibility

• Are Meetings/Chat/Recordings Accessible to those using screen readers? Yes, since release 0.8+.
  • Live Closed Captions are now available: video

What features will be added in the future?

BigBlueButton has a feature roadmap that you can check out at any time