BigBlueButton

BigBlueButton is an open-source virtual classroom: live video software designed for teachers and students rather than for business meetings. The homepage describes it as "a purpose-built virtual classroom," and the features page puts it more simply: "BigBlueButton was created in a classroom, not a boardroom." According to the site, it was developed by the Technology Innovation Management (TIM) program at Carleton University's Institute for Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization in Ottawa, Canada, in 2007.

It reaches most of its users through other platforms. The site says BigBlueButton "has been adopted by Canvas, Moodle Cloud, Sakai, Jenzabar, D2L, and Schoology as their default virtual classroom," and that "these vendors comprise more than 75% of the worldwide market for LMS systems." It also says that every day millions of educators and learners, "in over 65 languages," use it for their online classes. For a school, a university, a training team or a cohort-based course, it is the live session layer, the room where the class actually meets.

What a teacher gets

The feature list is built around a lesson. Teachers can upload documents such as PowerPoint, Word, PDF and images to present, highlight content on a virtual whiteboard, or open a multi-user whiteboard so students can work on it too. Breakout rooms split the class for collaborative work, polling tests what students know, and shared notes give a group a common page to write on. Screen sharing, video in low, medium and high resolution, and public and private chat round out the basics.

The layout is meant to feel familiar. The features page says BigBlueButton shows "a user list, chat, and presentation laid out in a left-to-right format for easy readability," that "you can always see who is talking as their names highlight above the presentation," and that the chat "always shows who is typing." Students can raise a hand virtually, react with emojis, and share their webcam with custom backgrounds.

In a demo on the homepage, co-founder Fred Dixon walks through the features the project sees as its difference from a conferencing system: built-in visual assessment tools, AI-powered smart slides, live analytics to gauge student engagement, and easy-to-use multi-user whiteboards.

Learning Analytics Dashboard

The feature that sets BigBlueButton apart for teaching is the Learning Analytics Dashboard. The features page says it lets a teacher quickly answer three questions: who is attending the session, who is participating, and "Who is learning (based on responses to polls)." The page adds that "you can quickly pinpoint students that are struggling and give them feedback in the moment," and that the analytics work "without any dependency on webcams to determine if students are engaged and learning." For a live cohort where many learners keep their cameras off, that is a practical way to see who is keeping up.

Results and who uses it

The homepage quotes Kim Blanchard, Director of Digital Education and Artificial Intelligence at Activate Learning: "Students taking GCSE Maths and English online classes delivered using BigBlueButton have achieved a full grade point higher than the equivalent in-person classes." That result is the institution's own, reported for its courses, which it says combined BigBlueButton with Canvas and its own approach.

Other quotes on the site come from a K-12 tutoring program at Kids' Club Spanish School, from AVID in higher education, and from Laurent Le Prieur at the French Ministry of Education, who cites breakout rooms, the whiteboard and broadcasting YouTube videos to all participants as reasons for the choice, and says the ministry added support for sharing videos from PeerTube. Marc Matthes of Iowa Central Community College says that with BigBlueButton "the support issues are almost non-existent."

LMS integrations

The integrations page lists the platforms that build BigBlueButton in. Moodle has an activity module "created and maintained by Blindside Networks" for Moodle 1.9, 2.x and 3.x, and the page says "The integration is merging into the core for Moodle 4.x." Canvas has integrated it as Canvas Conferences, where instructors create conferences and invite students. Sakai offers it through the Sakai Meeting tool, Schoology through an LTI integration, and the IServ school server as a module called "Videokonferenzen." The page also lists integrations for Open edX, ATutor, Chamilo, Drupal, Docebo, Fedena, Foswiki, Jenzabar, Nextcloud, Redmine, OpenOlat and Tiki Wiki. For OpenOlat, it notes load balancing across multiple servers.

On standards, the developers page says "BigBlueButton is learning tools interoperability (LTI) 1.0 compliant." The integrations page adds that it can accept LTI launch requests from any tool consumer, naming Desire2Learn, BlackBoard and Pearson Learning Studio as examples. For an institution, this usually means the classroom is already a click away inside the LMS it uses.

Running it yourself or hosted

Because it is open source, an institution can run its own server. The developers page says BigBlueButton "is fully packaged and tested for Ubuntu 20.04 64-bit" and "You can install the entire product with just a few commands," with a step-by-step installation guide and full technical documentation. The source code is on GitHub, where it can be forked and extended. A modular client lets administrators enable or disable components, and the server API gives "an easy HTTP interface for creating, joining, and ending meetings, as well as management of recordings." For organizations that want a simple standalone front end, the project maintains Greenlight.

Not every school wants to run servers. The support page points to "third-party companies that can provide premium hosting and support for BigBlueButton," and the developers page mentions Certified BigBlueButton Solution Providers. The bigbluebutton.com site is titled "Official Hosting by the Founders of BigBlueButton" and names Blindside Networks as the provider.

The project is built, in the site's words, by "a world-wide community of developers" and "managed by a group of core committers." The site lists no price for the software itself; the cost of running it depends on the hosting route.

Support and resources

Help comes from several directions. The support page lists tutorial videos, a knowledge base "for extensive how-to articles," mailing lists to "collaborate with other members of the BigBlueButton community," commercial support from third parties, and an Integrators page linking to LMS providers that have built BigBlueButton in. The documentation site has separate educator and student guides, with getting-started material and quick references. The site menu also covers accessibility, pedagogy, a public road map, events and a global community.

Who it suits

BigBlueButton suits schools, colleges and universities, especially those already on Moodle, Canvas, Sakai, Schoology or another LMS that integrates it, since the virtual classroom may already be available inside their courses. It also suits training teams and cohort programs that run live sessions and want analytics on attendance, participation and poll results without requiring webcams, and institutions with their own IT staff that want to host the software on their own servers.

A solo creator without an LMS or a hosting provider will find the path less direct: the software is a classroom, not a course platform with checkout and enrollment, so it is typically paired with an LMS or reached through a hosting provider. For institutions that already have that, it brings a live classroom designed around how teachers teach.