Sakai: Meetings

Meetings

Meetings (BigBlueButton) is an open source webinar tool that allows you to share content with your students remotely. You can share your desktop, upload and display presentations, use a white board, use a webcam, and use text chat with your students. It's still a new tool, so it's great for conducting meetings, but it's not ready to be used for recording lectures.

4/30/13: Why can't Meetings be used to record lectures? Even though you can record a session, the recordings start as soon as someone enters a meeting, which creates a significant pause or wait time before the meeting actually starts. You can record displaying presentations, but you can't record using a whiteboard or webcam at this time. You're suppose to be able to record sharing your desktop, but it is not consistently recording. Finally, you can't be edit or download recordings. You can either make a recording available or unavailable in your classroom in the Meetings tool.

What can you do with Meetings

• What can an instructor do with the Meetings tool/BigBlueButton? (BigBlueButton)

Minimum computer requirements

• • Students and Instructors: You must use a web browser running Adobe Flash 10.3 or higher, according to BigBlueButton .
    • To check your web browser flash version (and download the latest version), visit Adobe's Flash Version Check
  • Students and Instructors: If using a Mac, please follow the instructions and link provided by BigBlueButton
  • Instructors and Presenters only: To share your desktop, you must have Java installed on your desktop BigBlueButton Instructor/Presenter Set-up Instructions
  • Recommended Number of Users per meeting session: 25 or less. According to BigBlueButton, you may experience performance problems with more than 25 students in a single session.

Uploading and Displaying Presentations

• • Can I upload Microsoft documents to BigBlueButton? Tip: Save your file as a PDF (BigBlueButton)
  • Will my animations in PowerPoint convert when uploading to BigBlueButton? No (BigBlueButton)
  • Is there a page limit for uploaded files? 100 pages. (BigBlueButton)

Desktop Sharing=

• • What does an instructor need to do to share their desktop? Tip: You must download Java (BigBlueButton)
  • Can I share a specific window when sharing my desktop? Tip: Yes (BigBlueButton)
  • As a presenter, in addition to BigBlueButton, I see a small preview window. What do my students see? (BigBlueButton)

Voice Conference

• • Why can't others hear me when I join the voice conference? (BigBlueButton)
  • Why do others only hear part of my audio? Your microphone volume may be too low. Move your microphone closer to your mouth. You may need to change the volume setting of your microphone. (BigBlueButton)
  • Why do I hear music when I join a voice conference? (BigBlueButton)
  • Why is there an echo in the voice conference? Tip: Students should use headsets or the presenter can mute students (BigBlueButton)

Using Chat in Meetings

• • How can I copy all chat messages to the clipboard? (BigBlueButton)

Record and Playback

• • Is there a record start/stop button? No.
  • How do I set up a recording? When you create a meeting, you can click on the box beside Recording.
  • When does a recording start and stop? BigBlueButton will record all of the meeting, from the time the first person joins to when the last person leaves. 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 parts of the session does BigBlueButton record? Tip: Presently, whiteboard and mouse movements are not recorded (BigBlueButton)
  • What web browsers play recordings? Tip: Firefox and Chrome, not Internet Explorer or Safari. (BigBlueButton)
  • Can I download recordings? Not at this time. This is an open source product. Recording capabilities were a recent update for BigBlueButton.-->
• Tutorials
  • Instructor and Student (BigBlueButton)