BigBlueButton: Add a Meeting

Purpose

BigBlueButton is a web conferencing tool that enables you to host and record live virtual sessions with students. In these sessions, you can share slides, webcams, and screens. BigBlueButton supports learning engagement through interactive features like breakout rooms, live chat, whiteboarding, and polling.

Steps

1. To add a BigBlueButton session to your module, you must first Turn editing on.

2. Scroll down to the section you want to add the BigBlueButton session to and select Add an activity or resource.

3. From the pop-up menu, search for and select the BigBlueButtonBN

4. Once selected, you will be taken to a screen that allows you to add specific details and settings to your meeting. This article will look at the most important of the settings.
5. Leave the instance type as the default: Room/Activity with recordings. Under General settings, give your classroom a meaningful name. You can also add a description, so your students know what to expect from the session before they join (select Show more… to expand this area).

6. Under Activity/Room settings, you can add a welcome message that displays within the room once students join the session, and you can indicate whether students must wait for a moderator before they are allowed to join. You can also decide whether the session can be recorded or not.

Important: you must select the Session can be recorded checkbox if you want the option to be able to record a session. If this checkbox is not selected, you will not have the option to record once the session has begun.

7. Under Lock settings, you can choose to disable certain features. For example, if you want students to respond verbally, you can disable the chat feature to discourage them from entering text-based answers.
8. Under Presentation content, you can pre-upload a presentation for your session.
9. Under Role assigned during live session, you can decide whether users can join as Viewers or Moderators. You can do this on a user or role basis.
10. Under Schedule for session, you can set a specific date, time, and length for the session. You leave these options disabled if you want the session to be open or rejoinable.
11. Review any other settings you require and once you are happy with them all, select Save and return to course or Save and display. You have now set up a BigBlueButton session.

Further Information

For more information on BigBlueButton, please see the following articles: Baic & Advanced Features – Moodle BigBlueButtonBN.