BIG BLUE BUTTON Brief Introduction

    1. how do I create a room and invite students?



    On the Big Blue Button homepage, you can create so-called rooms, i.e. digital meetings of several people.



    After you click on the ⋮ button next to ‘Create room’, the room can be customised with various settings, e.g:


    • Mute participants when entering: Useful for lectures, less useful for discussion groups.

    • Approval by moderator before the room can be entered: This allows rooms to be opened specifically for certain people.

    • Any participant can start the meeting (here, anyone who enters the room can start the meeting, even if the moderator is not yet present)

    • All users participate as moderators (everyone is activated as a moderator at the same time)

    In addition, there is the ‘Manage Access’ function, which can only be used to invite other teachers, as students are not registered independently with BBB due to the high administrative effort involved.



    If you want to invite people to a meeting in a room, please select the created room and copy the link ‘Invite participants’. This copied link must then be sent to the invited persons, e.g. the students, by e-mail, i.e. simply paste it into the e-mail to all those invited.




    If you now want to start the meeting in the room, click on the ‘Start’ button. Please note: Your Internet browser will ask for permission to use the microphone or camera at various points. These requests must be confirmed in each case.

    After starting the meeting, you will be asked to use your microphone (the browser will also ask whether Big Blue Button is authorised to access the microphone). Please click on the microphone symbol and wait until the microphone test has been completed.





    If you can hear your voice clearly in the test, please click on the green ‘Yes’ button (the voice will come back with a slight delay). You will now take part in the digital meeting in the room. At the beginning, only your audio is activated.



    2. you are now in the room for the meeting.


    There are five options at the bottom of the window, which are labelled with the following symbols:




    Plus: Various actions can be carried out here: You can start a survey, upload a presentation (images, PDFs) or embed an external video (from Vimeo, YouTube, etc.)



    Microphone: Your own microphone can be temporarily switched on and off.




    Handset: This switches the microphone off completely.



    Camera: Activates the webcam on the computer.



    Screen: The screen can be shared here. This means that others can see what you are currently doing on your own computer (screen sharing).

    In the centre of the screen is the presentation interface. Uploaded images, films and whiteboards (writable boards) are shown here.



    On the right are a few tools (by selecting the hand symbol) for drawing and writing on the presentation area. The slide buttons in the presentation area only work for PDF files with several pages!

    3. create presentations

    A presentation can be uploaded using the ‘plus’ symbol at the bottom of the screen. The documents should first be collected in a folder on the desk/desktop of your own PC. It is advisable to give the documents a numbering for the sequence there, as the sequence cannot be changed later. The files can then be uploaded to the room in the desired order.




    Individual files can be activated for students to download. With the circle symbol (next to the small rubbish bin symbol) you can also select the current document to be shown to all participants. Once you have added all documents here, click on Upload.

    To select another document later, go back to the ‘Select a presentation’ action via the plus symbol and click on the circle symbol of the document that is to be displayed to all participants next and then on ‘Confirm’.

    The slide buttons in the presentation area only work for PDF files with multiple pages!

    When ending a meeting in a room, all presentations are unfortunately lost and must be uploaded again.

    4. Manage participants


    Various settings can be assigned to the other participants in the list of participants on the left-hand side of the screen:

    • Start a private chat: Text messages can be sent independently of the general chat field. This means that only one message will be sent to a specific participant.

    • Mute user: Mute participants

    • Assign the Presenter: Participants can also create and present presentations. There is only ever one presenter for a room. However, the whiteboard can be switched to multi-user, in which case all users can draw on the whiteboard.

    • Promote to moderator: The selected participant becomes the moderator. A moderator can mute participants or remove them from the room and make people presenters. There can be several moderators.

    • Remove user: The corresponding participant is removed from the meeting.

    By clicking on the own user icon, various emoticons can be selected, e.g. raise hand, absence, etc.


    Tags
    BBB
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