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physical Room is out, Virtual Class for everybody is under one roof. It is so as easy as pressing a (metaphorical) Big Blue Button |
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You have reached this page to know how efficiently as well as productively you could use the LEARN vCR platform for online teaching. The page contains the best practices to follow that it will help you to conduct your classes efficiently on very low resources. Some of your poor students might be on very low internet speeds and using cheap or old mobile devices or laptops.
Unlike well know commercial video conferencing platforms, BigBlueButton has been built specifically for teaching. It is Webinar style teaching platform. However, you could use it for small meetings as well.
Video tutorials presented in this user guide have been created several months ago, the instructions can be slightly different, but they could help you a lot to learn it quickly.
Before you moving further, if you haven't done, It is mandatory to read and understand the End-User Agreement. You can try out the platform before agreed on. It is strongly advised that you should not real use the LEARN vCR platform, if you can not agree on.
The number is unknown but it could be very large (over 800) if you conduct your class in Webinar mode. When you want to have thousands viewers, you can easily stream your session on Youtube/Facebook. See the Live Streaming below.
If you allow everybody to keep their webcams and microphones on, the number should not go beyond 40 (small). If you restrict everybody to turn them on, the number can be over 100 (large). If you can keep your webcam also off having only your voice and the UPLOADED presentation, the number can be much bigger (very large). Sharing your whole screen or part of it is heavier than keeping your webcam on where it consume a lot of resource resulted to reduce the number of participants.
Therefore for very large classes well over 100, it is advised to force your students webcam and microphone to be kept turned off. You can set those flags after the virtual class Room started. See Locking Viewers features down below. This means that you are converting your Room to almost Webinar style, students can only communicate to you over chat.
When you do need to show your face to the audience in a very large room, you can send it at low quality (resolution) rather than sending it in HD format. When you turn on your webcam set the quality as Low (default is also Low). The quality level Low is good enough to see the ones face clearly.
If you were able to conduct large sessions, please share your experience with LEARN engineering (eng at learn.ac.lk) so that we could update this document with more realistic figures.
The LEARN vCR is not just a single server instance but it is a cluster of scalable load balanced BBB instances with its supporting services hosted on premise on multi-millions expensive server/networking hardware. A separate BBB sever instance will be allocated for your session from the start to its end. Your session will not be affected by others sessions. For an instance of 100 concurrent sessions (rooms), 100 server instances will be served.
You don't have to install any additional desktop application or mobile app, vCR (BBB) is completely Internet browser based. You can use any standard browser (not outdated), but Google Chrome is recommended for exploring all the features of the platform hassle-free.
Alway keep the camera quality as Low if you want to get a big number of participants in your room. You can change camera quality when you turn on your video every time.
Video Tutorial for using your webcams.
The minimum Internet speed (bandwidth) requirement is 1Mbps download and 0.5Mbps upload. Use https://speedtest.net to test your bandwidth before the start of the session. Your connection should be reliable during the session. Note that you as the presenter, at 0.5Mbps upload, you can only have your voice, uploaded presentation and your webcam video at the quality Low.
Video Tutorial to understand Network Status icon.
Once you signed in, just click on +New Room and enter Room name to click on Create Room. Then you can see the newly created Room on your home page. The copy icon below the Room name can be use to copy the Room join link. The join link can be share on your LMS or over email or on other communication method. Remember not to publish it anywhere (social media).
Do not delete a Room immediately after your session ended, because once it was deleted your recording and participants detail will be lost. Keep it sometime till you download recordings and received reports. To delete a Room, click on the Room rectangle, go to the Settings and then click on Delete Room.
You can upload your presentation before the start of the Room or you can upload it after the start of your session. Just before the start your room, click on the Room rectangle (not on the Start button) to go into the Room detail. Click on the Presentation tab to upload your presentation in pdf format. Otherwise click on blue + button at the lower middle of the screen to select Upload/Manage presentation. You can upload many presentations and select to screen one by one after pressing blue + button.
As stated above, sharing your Desktop screen or PowerPoint window is a very bad practice as it will drastically reduced the Room size.
Also note that the maximum pdf file size possible is 10MB. Using high resolution images always make its size bigger. Try to keep the size as low as possible for quick upload and also for fast delivery to your participants.
Sharing screen (entire desktop or a window) could be a bad practice as it will reduce the class size. You can use uploaded presentation instead. Your computer screen sharing has to be early enabled.
In case, you do need to share the screen, after the start of a Room in a Google Chrome browser, just click on the computer screen button next to the video camera button at the lower middle of the Room page. A new window with a few tabs pops up for you to select the entire screen or a application window.
You can simply click on Start button inside the Room rectangle. Wait a few seconds to carefully select your laptop/PC audio devices (Microphone and Speaker/Headphone). Incorrect setting should result audio in/out issues.
Once you got into the Room page, the rest of the controls/features are more like other platforms. They are self explanatory.
You can end your session just by clicking on four vertical dots on the right top corner of your session window and then selecting End meeting. If you just want to leave the session without ending it (participants stay connected), you can select Leave meeting.
After started a Room (during the session), click on gear icon in front of USERS line in your left side window of the Room page to select Locking Viewer. A new window with list of features is opened. All of them are turned on by default. You can turn them off to lock the viewers. Once turn all of them off, then your Room should be a Webinar style.
Upload all of your presentations to the room, and lock viewer features. See the above. You Room then should be a Webinar. Very large classes have to be in Webinar mode.
When you are in the Room (Room started), you can click on the Start Recording button on top of the page to start recording. You can stop the recording at any time and resume it again back and forth. This is cloud recording, local recording is not possible (for local recording you can use screen recording). The recording can be seen at the Room detail page in 10 minutes after the Room closed. You can view the recorded sessions online. You can publish them for students to view. Note that the recordings are kept only for two weeks and they will be automatically deleted from the cloud. If you need them, you may have to download them onto your computer. You can download your session recording in MP4 format after 6 hours your session ended. You can see the download button at the lower right corner of the playback screen after 6 hours. MP4 file size is around 120Mb per hour.
Note that the recording also significantly reduces the Room size as it consumes a lot of backend resources. For very large classes, consider not to cloud record. But you can use screen recording to save it locally. You can either use your OS screen recording feature or a third party software like Free Open Source OBS Studio during your session.
Annotation facility is only available on uploaded presentation. See the above to know how to upload a presentation. It is not possible on shared screen. The annotation tool set can only be seen on the uploaded presentation.
Keyboard shortcuts help you a lot to do things when you are in a session. You can see the available shortcuts if you go to Options by clicking on three vertical dots (.) at right top corner of the room window.
Fit to page feature should be very useful when you sharing portrait presentation or a document. Video Tutorial.
You can save participants names before the end of the session. Click on gear icon in front of USERS line on your left side window to select Save user names. The list will be saved in your download folder.
Apart from you can view the Learning Analytics Dashboard, the option can be found on USERS settings; gear icon in front of USERS line. A new page is opened and the participants list can be seen and downloaded. It has to be done during the session. You can not see the list after the Room closed.
Note that LEARN shall not provide the session reports or participants list on your requests, you do have to save it before the end of your session. However, the LEARN vCR platform will automatically email the report (participant list) early in the next morning. It is only for your reference.
Unlike other video conferencing platforms, BigBlueButton as a teaching platform provides a better analysis of students engagement in online classes. Apart from attendance/participation, it gives you a live metrics of effective teaching and learning.
You can select the live Learning Analytics Dashboard under Settings (click on gear icon at the middle on your left). Note that you can not see the Learning Analytics Dashboard after the Room closed.
You can annotate on slides of a uploaded presentation. So a blank slide can be a white board. The 2nd to 9th pages of default presentation are blank slides. 10th and 11th are small square (graph) pages. 12th is a line paper. 13th to 15th big square pages that can be used in group works. You can turn on Multi-user whiteboard for your students to annotate, by clicking the multiuser button on the presentation control bar just below your slide.
Video Tutorial to know how you could use the white board.
On your left of the Room page, you can see the Shared notes. Click on it and wait for a few seconds till the note pad loaded. Once it appeared, you can write notes. Click on 4 vertical dots on upper right conner of the note pad to convert your notes in to a presentation or pin notes onto the whiteboard.
You or your moderator can write captions. Any user can be promoted to a moderator just by click on the user and selecting promote to moderator option. Click on gear icon in front of the USERS line to select Write Closed Captions. Click on CC button at lower middle of the page to start viewing the captions.
After you started Closed Captions, click the blue button Start Dictation at upper left corner of the Caption sub-window. What you talk should now be dictated. You might need to enable your browser/computer Speech Recognition.
Click the (+) button at the lower middle of the page to select Share an external video. Then type or paste external video URL; for an example YouTube video URL.
To change the layout of the screen select the actions menu by pressing the (+) blue button and then select Layout Settings Modal. You will be presented with 4 options, Custom, Smart layout, Focus on presentation, and Focus on video.
Look at lower middle of the Room page. Click on (+) blue button to select Start a poll. Then type your question and select response type; the rest is self explanatory. More detail here.
To enable Guest Policy (waiting room) select Guest Policy under Settings. Click the gear button in front of the USERS line at the middle left of your main window to get the Settings. Then select Ask Moderator.
Now the users will not be directly connected to the Room, they have to wait until you take them in. You can see the waiting users above the USERS line. Click on the user to Accept in.
Click on the gear icon in front of the USERS line of middle left of your Room page to select Create breakout rooms. The rest could be self explanatory.
You can add co-hosts to your Room at the room detail page. Click on the Access tab and then click on + Share Access to search and select a registered user as a co-host. The co-host has to be a registered user of LEARN vCR.
Really nice cool features!... See here...
You can ask your students to show something on your slide, such as locating Netherlands on a world map slide so that you can see all but students can't see each other. First lock the see others viewers cursor (see the above Locking viewers features) and then turn on Multi user whiteboard by click on the icon next to the slide selector lower middle of the slide window.
Smart slides enable a presenter to prepare a polling slide deck in advance or include polling questions in their regular content. More detail here at the end of the page.
The platform doesn't have builtin YouTube and/or Facebook live streaming features. However, you can easily use a third party software like Free Open Source OBS Studio to live stream your class with YouTube and/or Facebook.
OBS Studio User Guide for LEARN vCR.
In Moodle use the Session Join Link to add an URL activity by manually typing the session start time and its duration at the description. You may have to login to LEARN vCR to create and/or get the session join link copied. Your students should be then able to just click on the URL to join in.
Note: for security and accountability reasons, creating/scheduling sessions within the Moodle is not available for LEARN vCR.
Send a short email to LEARN engineering (eng at learn.ac.lk ) with a short description of the issue including screenshots or a screen-captures. Note that LEARN has provided this platform without a SLA, but at the best effort of LEARN engineering with your full of cooperation.
For any additional assistance, contact LEARN TAC
Thank you for choosing LEARN virtual Class Room (vCR). It should help the country to save some out flow of foreign currencies.