GWDG now offers BigBlueButton (BBB) productively and with increased capacity at https://meet.gwdg.de. It serves as a video conferencing service, but can also be used for e-learning scenarios. It is thus also available for the summer semester. The service will be further expanded in the coming days for more functions and capacity.
As part of the COVID-19 crisis, we evaluated possible e-learning scenarios together with the e-learning team at the University of Göttingen.
After evaluating the open source tools Jitsi and BigBlueButton we decided on the latter. With BigBlueButton we offer a video conferencing tool that, in addition to conventional video conference functions such as screen sharing and chat, is also suitable for e-learning scenarios. The tool is based on HTML5, runs in the browser and does not require any software installation. BBB runs in our own data centre and under our own control, in contrast to our commercial, external cloud solutions like Zoom.
BigBlueButton offers the following features that go beyond video conferencing:
- Upload and show presentations
- Annotation function for presentations (also by multiple users inside)
- Download function of the presentations for participants inside
- Establishment of so-called “break-out rooms” for group work
- Note function
- Conducting surveys
- Recording options for the conference
- Individual sessions with up to 100 people
The productive instance can be reached at https://meet.gwdg.de. Please log in using your respective primary e-mail adress (e.g. mmuster@uni-goettingen.de). This is new in comparison to the test system. Invited participants do not have to register, only the host of the room has to be logged in.
Note: The current test system https://bbb-test.gwdg.de will remain operative until 15.05.2020. There is no automatic transfer of existing meetings or recordings.
Tutorial videos can be found at https://bigbluebutton.org/html5/.
We kindly ask you to give us feedback of your meeting experience here. Thank you!