Conference 10 Concurrent Users?

[c1173265]

In a post on this site I saw a response saying we could have up to 100 students in a Canvas Conference.  We will never get to that in one class.  But I also saw it said if you planned to have more than 10 Concurrent users we should consider zoom or other sources?

I'm asking because with all the Corona issues etc our school is planning to conference every class every day that has a child missing due to sickness, quarantine or that is choosing to go online only.  So we may have 20 classes going concurrent.  Is this just an issue with bandwidth in our own school or is the 10 some limit set by Canvas for each institution?

[James · Accepted solution]

 @c1173265  

The 10 is on the number of concurrent conferences, not the number of concurrent viewers within each session. The number of concurrent viewers is theoretically unlimited, but the recommendation is a limit of 100 users. This is from the Canvas Instructor Guide: How do I create a conference in a course? 

The limit of 10 is because of the version of BigBlueButton that Canvas is using. There's another note in that link I provided that says:

Note: If your institution is likely to need more than 10 concurrent Conferences powered by BigBlueButton, consider upgrading to Premium BigBlueButton or exploring alternative conferencing solutions Canvas partners with, such as Zoom, Hangouts, Teams, and other video conferencing tools who are offering free or discounted services.

The link to the video conferencing tools provides additional information and alternatives.

[c1173265]

Yes James I am asking about Concurrent.  In other words on my campus I may have 20-25 classes being shown all at the same time.  This limitation is because our Canvas will be using BigBlueButton free version apparently. 

So my options are?

Upgrade to BigBlueButton Premier?

Zoom?

Hangouts?

Teams?

Just making sure I'm seeing this right before I meet with Administration who knows jack about anything IT.  

[James]

Correct. Those four are not the only choices, but they are popular ones that were listed perhaps because they were giving away free access. I do not know how long that free access will continue, but I wouldn't count on Zoom or Pronto or others that weren't already included in some package you have for the fall. Here's a link to someone's idea of The Best Zoom Alternatives for Videoconferencing from April with a similar but newer take from July The Best Videoconferencing Apps for 2020.

I am not in a position to recommend one over another as I don't have the internet connection required to stream from home and haven't looked into it. But here's what we did at our community college. Our institution has the Microsoft access but we weren't great users of Teams (some of us had started using it before COVID hit). We ended up going with Zoom, even though we had to pay for it, rather than just using Teams.